The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Anthony Edwards powers Timberwolves to BLOWOUT of SGA & OKC Thunder

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Jason reacts live to Minnesota Timberwolves blowout win vs the OKC Thunder. Jason applauds Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle for their ability to bother OKC’s defensive scheme, and previews what each team must do to win Game 4.  Jason wraps up with a mailbag to answer your questions.    #Volume #Herd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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 ice. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.c.c.o slash audio. Hi here at the Volume Heavy Saturday, everybody. I hope all of you guys are having a great start to your weekend. Well, the Minnesota Timberwolves made a couple of key changes to their game plan tonight, wrote some hot shooting and unbelievable shot making for Matt and Julius Ed, Julius Randall, and beat the living shit out of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

What was a very interesting game on a bunch of different levels, some stuff that's like classic game three down two-oh buzz sauce stuff, but also some realities in terms of the ability of this Minnesota team to make Oklahoma City uncomfortable at stretches. some growth from Minnesota shot creators as they had by far their most successful sustained offense in this particular game. So much interesting stuff to get into tonight. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore Jason LT so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast fee wherever you get your

podcast under Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Check out our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. We're releasing content throughout the year. And then keep dropping questions in the chat so that we can hit them in our mailbags towards the end of these shows. Now, tonight's show in particular, Jackson's out of town.

So if you guys want to get questions, we're going to be taking chat questions from my Twitter feed. So if you go to my Twitter feed at underscore Jason LT, and you scroll down, you'll see a tweet where I asked for questions. Feel free to drop the questions in there. And when I get done with the breakdown, we'll head into that kind of thread there. start grabbing questions from there. Also, when we finish tonight, we're going to be moving over

to playback. Again, that's playback.tv.tv slash hoops tonight. There for, you know, another hour or so, we're going to be taking callers. We'll watch some film. It's more informal. It's a lot of fun. We just talk hoops and have fun for an extra hour at the tail end of the show. So make sure you guys head over there. All right, let's talk some basketball. So at, uh, in the, the playback session last night, we have a thunder fan, a fan name Will. who has graced us with his presence several times, some fun venting and some takes on his Thunder team. And I asked Will,

I said, what is Shay's biggest weakness? And I was trying to make a point with respect to his, with the game plan. And Will mentioned three point shooting. What I was trying to say was his playmaking, specifically that if you pack the pain against him, he's a passer that can make reads and is a,

you know, certainly good enough at the job to still be a top. tier superstar in this league, but no one's going to call out Shea's playmaking as the strength of his game. And similarly to what Will was saying, no one's going to call out the SGA's three-point shooting as the strength of his game. The two things there in his game that you would point to as like not like the, like far down the list of what he's great at is his three-point shooting and his processing in the half court. What would you consider to be his strengths? Well, he's the best high volume iso player in the league by a mile among any player who ran at least 300

ISO's this year shot out of 300 ISO's. He was far and away the most efficient and he's far and away the best driver of the basketball in the league. You have like 200 more drives than anyone else in the NBA this year, which you know, you can do the math there on how many times that is per game. And so what I didn't like about the game plan that Chris Finch used in the first two games was he was picking up Shea really far away from the basket with Jada Daniels often right when he was crossing half court and he was staying glued to shooters off the ball. And one of the things that did is it allowed Shay to, one, not have to rely on his three point shot because he's beating ball pressure by driving. And so you're playing into the strength of his game

by giving him a much wider runway, a longer runway to drive past his man. And then two, he doesn't have to rely on that three point shot because he's not being, you know, baited into it by a guy playing off of him. And then the third piece of it is, if you stay home off the ball and you let Shea play a lot of one on one or a lot of two on two, you're accentuating his shot making, his foul grifting, his scoring ability, which is the kind of thing that made him the MVP of this league, instead of forcing him to process tight space environments in the middle of the floor and show off his passing ability, which again, he's fine at, but it's not his strength. And so I, you know, again, I was immediately annoyed about this in game one.

Game two, it was defensible to run it back just because Minnesota shot so poorly in game one. You could talk yourself into thinking that maybe you just shoot better. Overall, though, I'm a big believer and you spotted the Oklahoma City Thunder or two O lead. Now, they might have gone up to O'O anyway, even with the right game plan, but you played an inferior game plan that allowed Oklahoma City to dominate you through the first two games. when we had a clear example in the previous round from Denver of how to make this Oklahoma City team uncomfortable. I pulled the numbers yesterday. I can't remember exactly off top my head, but they had an offensive rating around like 113, I believe, against Denver. And in the first two games, they had an offensive rating of 120 against Minnesota. Minnesota is a substantially more talented defensive roster, bigger, longer athletes that are faster, deeper.

They probably have two and a half good defenders for every good defender on the Denver roster. There was no excuse for them to be getting cut to pieces the way that they did. Again, I'm not sitting here saying that Minnesota should be up three up. No, the Thunder are amazing. But you just played a game plan that allowed the Thunder to kick the shit out of you and score on you easily, which doesn't match your specific personnel and how good they should be at stopping this team. In theory, they should be able to do a better job of what Denver did. The same game plan, but with better personnel, should in theory lead to dramatic results.

And we saw that tonight. Immediately right out the gates, the specific ball pressure adjustment, Jaden was not meeting Shea outside the three point line. He was meeting him inside the three point line, not allowing him to get that head of steam against the ball pressure. But then against everybody else, and I thought this was the genius little tweak from Chris Finch, against everyone else, he was pressuring. Because again, those guys aren't the dribble drive threat that Shea Gilder's Alexander is.

And so what ended up happening is you were able to neutralize that initial problem, which was Shea. He goes, four for 13 tonight, has four turnovers. He was one for four from three with four turnovers in the first half. So again, you accentuated his processing and his three-point shooting. You could knock down threes and he didn't make the read. Simple example, there was like a play where they pinched in off the ball because that's the other part of it. It's not just the ball pressure piece.

They were sinking in. You could see when Jaden is facing up against Shea, you know, he's staying in at the top of the key. And Shay's outside the three-point line. There's a little bit of a gap. You were seeing guys digging down into the driving lanes. They were bringing doubles not out at half court, but bringing the doubles inside the three point line. And in that zone, they were able to force Shea to pass. There was a play in the third quarter where they brought a double team of Shea inside the three point line around the elbow.

Isaiah Joe is wide open in the left corner and Shea just throws a bad pass to Isaiah Joe. And it's like if he throws a good pass on time on target, that's a three point shot. That's probably going to go in. But again, you're forcing Shea to do the. the thing that he's not as good at as the other things that he's great at. And I just thought that works. But then the second piece of it is pressuring the hell out of everyone else, which allows Minnesota to maintain their identity.

This is a Minnesota team. You guys want to know why they were picking up, you know, picking up at half court and pressuring and staying home off ball. You want to know why they were doing all that stuff? They were doing all that stuff because that's who they are as a basketball team. It's at their core. It's their identity. And so they wanted to, you know, and there's a lot of basketball teams that'll go about it this way, thinking like, you know, I want to beat the other team playing our style, you know, rather than immediately pivot and like surrender our identity right out the gates.

You know, I understand that thought process. But again, ultimately, when you get into a series like this against a team that's better, Oklahoma City demonstrated themselves to be better. They won 19 more games than Minnesota this year. And so the margins are thin and you need to play into what gives you the best chance to win this specific series. Very similarly, like I talk about it with coaching in the big picture. You don't want to coach for the roster you want. You coach for the roster you have. So if you're not fast, don't play a style of basketball that requires you to be fast and run.

Play a slower methodical matchup attacking type of attack. If you've got a really fast team with a bunch of fast, guards and you're not pushing the ball in transition. You're not accentuating what your roster is good at. But even in a very focused level in the postseason within one of these two-week series, you got to coach for this matchup. I don't care what your identity is. Shea torched you all season in that identity.

And so one of the things that I liked about that specific tweak from Finch was by sagging off of Shea, but by pressing up on everyone else, they were able to, when they had the ball, meaning. Well, obviously, when Shea had the ball, those guys were sinking in. But by pressuring up on everyone else when they had the ball, they were able to maintain some of that aggressive ball pressure identity that made Minnesota the basketball team that they've been over the course of the last two years.

And ironically, they were able to actually fulfill, you know, something or force something out of Oklahoma City that we very rarely see, which is them turning the basketball over. In that first half, they turned OKC over a bunch, and got out in transition a bunch. Again, whenever I talk about like bizarre outcomes,

so this is a bizarre outcome, right? Like, you're, it's five minutes left in the fourth quarter, you're up 44 on the 68 win thunder team that beat the shit out of you twice in Oklahoma City.

What causes you to flip the script that dramatically? Well, like I always say, it's not one thing. Many things have to go your way to lead to a dynamic that dramatic. So one, obviously, the shift in the game plan containing Shea, you've played him into his

first bad game of the series, full game. You obviously was bad in the first half of game one, but you played Shea into a bad game, right? Two, the ball pressure on the other Thunder players forcing turnovers in getting out in transition. Those are the two things that we've already discussed. The third thing, Ant and Julius making the corner kicks. we've talked about this nonstop through the first two games of the series.

Minnesota, for the first time tonight, showed the ability to dislodge Oklahoma City from their base defensive scheme. The first time, 34 in the first quarter, 38 in the second quarter, 35 in the third quarter. That's absurd. They were finally able to demonstrate, hey, your baseline scheme doesn't work. In the first two games, they were unable to do that.

Aunt and Julius forcing the issue, taking bad shots, not making the corner kicks. When the corner kicks were made, not knocking them down. In the first two games of the series, the wolves were nine for 36 on corner threes. That's 25%. That's not going to get the job done. The turnovers that they were dealing with. All of those things that they had to do to successfully process against this defense wasn't getting done. tonight as of five minutes left in the fourth quarter only nine turnovers relentlessly in this game aunt and julius making the corner kickout passes over and over again trusting their

ability to capitalize on that advantage and it wasn't just corner threes i thought jaden mcdaniels in particular did an incredible job tonight operating on that weak side corner as a guy who was hitting threes, but also attacking closeouts, making connective passing reads. There were a couple of plays in the late first half that I thought perfectly demonstrated this. One, a corner kick from Julius, another a corner kick from Ann.

I have in both of my Twitter feed. You can find him at underscore Jason LT. I put him in a little thread. But Julius drives. He draws Shay in and help because again, all series long, Oklahoma City has been packing the paint and conceding those corner kickouts. Julius makes the corner kickout. There's a closeout. That close out is an advantage, right? Got to capitalize on that advantage. Jaden racks to the baseline and on that rip-through move because he beats the close out. He's able to generate dribble penetration and it forces the big man to step up. Then Rudy Gobert

very smartly tees up, meaning he just kind of relocates from the opposite dunker spot right in front of the rim and makes himself available. Jaden drops it off to him. Rudy catches then Lou Dort has to, because he has no choice, digging, and also it's just kind of part of the way the Thunder play basketball, swoop in to try to steal it from Gobert, and as a result, Nikiel Alexander Walker is wide open at the top of the key. Rudy, another connective pass, pitches it to Nikiel at the top of the key, pump fakes on the closeout, gets in the lane and gets an easy, breezy floater.

In the lane, where Oklahoma City typically is swarming, but not attacking at the beginning of the possession, but hicking on the beginning of the possession, moving the ball, and suddenly things get loose. Suddenly there's an opportunity in the middle of the floor where you can look to be aggressive without having to deal with a swarm of Oklahoma City defenders. Very similar one, ant drives, kicks to the corner to Jaden,

draws an extra rotation from the top of the wing, pitches it to Nas Reed, another really aggressive closeout. Nas just shows the ball. Dude goes flying by, puts the ball on the floor, and then easy, breezy settles into a wide open three on the right wing that he knocks down. That's Advantage basketball.

That's how you have to break down this Oklahoma City defense. Get into the middle, make the corner kicks, knock them down when you're wide open, drive closeouts, make the connective reads. Then you're going to see opportunities for Aunt and Julius to be aggressive on the backside. But again, there's more to it than just that. Even the Aunt and Julius over the top shot making.

Like Aunt and Julius just did a better job of being a little more selective on the types of pull-up jump shots they were taking. I thought Ant took some really tough ones in the second half, but he got his rhythm first. He got it going with some easier looks against drop coverage or beating gambles. And so when he got his jumper going, then in the second half, he went to some really tough bits of shot making. but it came in the flow after he already built his rhythm. Julius Randall some over-the-top shot making in the short range and a pull-up three as well. Like you saw the shot making from the stars meet the moment as well.

Guys knocking down their catch and shoot threes. As of the time we started the show, there were seven Timberwolves players that hit multiple threes. I'm going there, Nasree, two for three. Dante DiVincenzo, two for two, for two. The Kiel Alexander Walker, two for four. Ant, five for eight. Mike Conley, two for six.

Jada McDaniels, two for four, Julius Randall, two for five. So all those dudes hit multiple threes, all of them hit over 40% except for Mike Conley. So the shooting followed, right? Again, if you're going to beat the shit out of a team that just previously blew you out, you need a bunch of factors to go your way, game plan shift, forcing turnovers and getting out in transition, Aunt and Julius making the reads, guys knocking down corner threes, connective playmaking attacking closeouts, aunt and Julius hitting shots over the top. And then what I thought was a really smart little move from Chris Finch to start in the,

I think he was right at the start of the second quarter, if I remember correctly, but it's in the first half. I thought he read the room right and was like, oh, we're forcing turnovers, we're getting out in transition. This is very much like a up and down the floor type of game. How about we throw Terrence Shannon in there? And Terrence Shannon, you know, in a league where it's hard to stand out as an athlete, this guy pops off the screen every time I watch him as an athlete. And he got some opportunities to attack, to slash off the wing, to slash in transition. And I thought he was great in his ship. I thought there's just a really smart move from Chris Finch in that spot.

So obviously, everything goes Minnesota's way in this game and they get a big win. The question is, can Minnesota still win this series? The problem is, is you spotted Oklahoma City a 2-0 lead with a foolish game plan. Now, again, as I mentioned before, there's no guarantee that you would have had an opportunity. to win either of those games, which you probably have a better chance to win those games if you end up starting the series with an appropriate game plan. The problem is, is now you still, even after tonight, you have to win three of the next four games.

And at least one of those games needs to be won in Oklahoma City, maybe two if OKC manages to steal one game in your building. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, huge news? we created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast?

Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a... We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts throughout there. But this one's extra special. So how do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it.

Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas,

and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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, S&L'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. Last night, a blown call changed a game. The morning, the internet lost its mind.

Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real.

From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. SportsSlice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlices on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slices Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness.

So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant this went to a billion-dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, Just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know.

Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Oklahoma City will come out and play better in game two. There are obvious things that will swing in, or excuse me, in Game 4, I apologize. Game two in Minnesota. Oklahoma City will play better in game four. There's a couple of obvious things that will tilt back their way. They're going to come out with a more desperate defensive effort with a ton of physicality. Like that's just guaranteed right out the gates, which means

Aunt and Julius are going to have to be even more deliberate with protecting the ball, with making the appropriate reads. Guys are going to have to hit threes against tighter closeouts. Guys when they drive closeouts are going to have to deal with sharper closeouts containing the ball. that they're going to have to do a better job beating and making those, you know, subsequent reads out of it, right? Oklahoma City turned the ball over a lot at the beginning of this game. I would expect Oklahoma City to turn the ball over less in game four, right? They're going to be more methodical.

Like they have seen this style of defense before they saw it in the Denver series. So we're going to see them most likely try to bring back some of that methodical playmaking and shot making that we saw in the Denver series that stretches, right? So like Oklahoma City will play way better in game four and this margin will be way tighter. Now the case, if you're a Minnesota fan and you're looking for a reason to feel optimistic about your chances to come back and win the series, the case is that you did some real damage tonight. This was not a win, this was an ass kicking. I thought you shook the thunder to their core tonight.

You had them looking disheveled and doing things they don't. normally do. Shea was awful. You played them into a bunch of turnovers. Look at how many times this year. Shea was four for 13 tonight. Go look at how many times this year, Shea shot that poorly from the field. That's 31%. I pulled the numbers for the show the other day. He had single digit games this year below 40% from the field. Guys like Jalen Brunson, guys like Anthony Edwards, they had more than 20 such games. You played Shea into an uncharacteristically tough game. You played a team that doesn't turn the basketball over into a bunch of turnovers. You took a 68 win team that I said last night I would be shocked if they didn't

win the title at this point and you beat the shit out of them. So if you're looking for optimism, that's what you cling to. You did some real damage. I would be shocked if Oklahoma City blew you out in game four. Game four is going to most likely be a tight competitive. game that will come down to some sort of sequence down the stretch. And if you can execute and you execute the game plan specifically, and if Julius and Ant make the appropriate reads, the guys play smart off of those advantages and finish plays with shot making, there is a real chance here.

But there's a reason why in NBA history, I saw a stat the other day, I believe only six times in the conference finals, a team has come back from down two oh. There's a reason why. you're not you're not playing against bums anymore this is the conference finals Oklahoma city has been the championship favorite since like the last third of the regular season this is a real team and you got to beat them four out of five times took care one but now you got to win three out of four and it's just really hard to do it's really hard to sustain

and so with that being the case like I still feel like the thunder are in a commanding position here but you just got to take it one game at a time we talked about this last night you win for New York, it's the same kind of thing. Just win game three. It changes the series. When game three, all of a sudden, game four becomes the pivot point. If you win game four, you go back to Oklahoma City in a two two series with the appropriate game plan and you feel like you have a better chance to win the series at that point. theoretically at that point, you're in a better shape than you are in game one zero zero because now you know the way that you want to play. you only got to beat them twice. Same thing goes with the Knicks. Win game three. All of a sudden

game four becomes the pivot point. You win game four, it's two, two. You're going home for a best of three and you figured out some stuff with the way you want to play. You just have to keep taking it one game at a time. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast. Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts.

We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band. Before Jonas Brothers was... This is how you guys remember it going down?

Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. 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. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect. We were God's chosen, Kingdom on Earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant this plant to a billion dollar fraud.

But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive? The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind.

Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes. in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports slice brings you closer to the action with stories told

by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. All right, bear with me for just a second because Jackson's gone. So I'm going to pull up the tweet here

so I can get these questions from you guys. All right. I know it's the playoffs and adjustments that matter, but do you think that Finch not adjusting the base defensive scheme in the first two games is him just not wanting to overreact and having confidence in his player's ability to execute.

Absolutely. That's what we talked about earlier. There's a, there's a kind of a push and pull that you see in every single, like, weird matchup that kind of leads to a blink, like kind of a staring contest between the coaches. So for instance, like let's say a fast team and a slow team play against each other.

Imagine like a lightning fast Golden State Warriors team with like Draymond Green at center in like 2022. and then like imagine a too big group so call it you know this year's minnesota timberwolves versus the 2022 warriors or another two big team like um like Houston or something like that with those situations it's like who's going to blink like are or is the small team going to be like shit we can't out small these guys let's go big or is the big team going to go like shit we're too slow for these guys, let's go small. Like, and it's like, who's going to be the first team that blinks?

And I think there's a certain amount of like, I think Chris Finch wanted to go out there with his base scheme and just be like, let's see if the thunder can beat the timber wolves. The problem is, is like, they beat you pretty good in game one and they cut you to pieces in that game. And it was pretty clear right away in game two that they could score whenever they wanted to again. So they're like there was no real point in game two where Minnesota took substantial control. And so they did for the record to Finch's credit like they did the game was just already out of reach. They did start doing this like kind of meat and shave further back and packing the paint thing on like some of the final possessions in the fourth quarter of game two.

It just was one of those things where like maybe if you do it earlier, this series is two one now instead of one two. But again, it's it is what it is. I'm generally of the opinion that in the postseason, you cannot waste time. Ask the Knicks who just blew game one. Ask the Lakers who got punched in the face by the wolves in game one. You know, there's so many different examples like this in all these different series. Like you cannot afford to spot teams wins in the postseason. So I'm generally of the belief that you should attack right away with the method that gives you

the best chance to win that series and make adjustments quicker rather than slower. We're talking about this with Jackson yesterday. Just in general, or with, I think it was Jake Isenberg yesterday. Like be quick to, don't be stubborn, be quick to make the appropriate adjustment to give you the best chance to win a playoff series. All right. Let's look at some other questions here. Hey, Jason, question here.

Something I noticed in these playoffs is the increase significance of elite team conditioning a la their relentless pacer's and O'KC defense. I know you mentioned attention to detail in the last video and I think there's a correlation there. What are your thoughts? I think we've seen this with the Knicks too, just in general, with the way that they push their guys' minutes. The Pacers dominated the second half of the season. The Knicks underachieved this year, but they played all their guys big minutes and like those dudes were asked to do a ton. The Thunder attacked the regular season relentlessly. Wolf's a little bit up and down over the course of the year, but down the stretch of the season,

they were playing great basketball. In general, the best way to, like, you know that old expression, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. Similarly, like, your best chance to play your best basketball when you need to is to practice playing your best basketball. Like, as a Laker fan, for instance, I didn't think the Laker defense was anywhere near as good as it was before LeBron heard his groin. When LeBron heard his groin, he was out for a while, the defense fell off a cliff. When LeBron came back, there was never really a point from that point to the end of the season where they looked like the same defense that they were before the injury.

So, yeah, I'm not surprised that they went into the Minnesota series and they were playing some shitty defense. I think there's a certain amount of, like, in general, preparing for playoff basketball. as it pertains specifically to Oklahoma City and Indiana these are two teams that play a very hectic style with full court ball pressure and a ton of rotation speed and flying up and down the floor in transition on offense

these are teams that need to be deep and need to be in great shape. It's just something that's necessary for their specific play style. Alrighty. Is Pascal the underrated X Factor in the Eastern Conference Finals that I think he is? The Knicks don't seem to have an answer for him.

going back to what we had last year in the postseason, if you guys remember, when O'G and Obie got hurt, Pascal caught Josh Hart for a lot of like his primary assignment stuff, and he was just cooking his ass all over the place. But like in general, Seacom is the missing piece to the Indiana pacer offense from what it already was before the trade last year, which was they had one of the best pick and roll players in the league, a guy that is going to consistently set teams up with their team up with an advantage, and they can play advantage basketball with the best of them. But what a guy like Siakum gives you

is the ability to create his own advantage one-on-one. And, you know, it's going to be different levels of value and different games based on the way the flow is. Ideally, I'm sure the Pacers would like to never have to use Pascal as an ISO player and have him attacking with an advantage consistently. And by the way, he does that. He had a couple of big catch-and-shoot threes. but like the it's like a break glass in case of we got stopped by the defense just give the ball to

Pascal he can go get a bucket and with that being the case he becomes vitally important within that specific pacer's construct all right let's see here this game in particular by the wolves involved them simply playing with a level of intensity and force that o kc expected from them but was unable to match finch finally made the defensive adjustments on shea as well what is sustainable for going into game four for the wolves. Talked a little bit about this early, earlier, but like,

again, I think the Thunder will absolutely bring a better defensive effort right away. Like, you're probably not going to score 72 points in the first half, right? And they certainly will take better care of the basketball. I can't remember exactly what the numbers were because they've been adopted,

adopted to the full game. I guess I can give you the full game numbers real quick. They gave up 16 points off of turnovers in this game, but I think 13 or 15 of them, like most of those came in the first. half. And by the way, Oklahoma City cleaned that up literally in the second half of this game. So I think they will take care, better care of the ball. So what are the, and also I think Aunt and Julius hitting really tough pull-up jump shots, there's a certain amount of variance in that. So there's a

there's a version of game four where those guys just don't hit the same shots. So what is it going to be that Minnesota can certainly bring into the next game, the right game plan? So again, just sagging off of Shea, packing the paint, ball pressuring the other guys when they have the ball. And then on offense, Julius and aunt making the corner kicks whenever they can and then playing advantage basketball out of that whenever they have an opportunity to. They've found a formula now that has shown the ability to work. T-Wolves fan, but do you think fatigue played a factor? If so, it's going to be a long series, no.

Everybody in an Oklahoma City jersey is, who plays in their rotation is 26 or younger, except for Alex Crusoe. So any of you guys who still play basketball at my age and your mid-30s will be able able to tell you how it feels feels a lot different when you're 25, 24, when you've got to play every other night. I still remember playing legitimately like four hours of pickup basketball a night when I was that age, you know, so like it's just a different, it's just a different physical ask for an Oklahoma City team. That said, there is like just part of human nature in terms of the natural kind of pullback of intensity that is going to take place naturally as part of

of urgency. Like this same Thunder team kind of got smacked by Memphis and would have lost game three if John Morant didn't get hurt. And so like there is a certain natural tendency to see that kind of pullback in these sorts of situations.

How much defensively would the wolves actually lose if they replaced Rudy with a mid-level guy who can actually shoot? I generally am of the belief. And I thought Rudy was better tonight, just was more active on the defensive glass and had a couple of sequences where he had better success against Shay

than he did in earlier parts of the series. But the thing with Rudy is his value as a rim protector is actually less in a scheme where you've got so many quality perimeter defenders relative to what his value looked like in Utah, for example, where, you know, he was cleaning up messes constantly

because there were, you know, Donovan Mitchell couldn't guard, Joe Ingalls couldn't guard, you know, Mike Conley couldn't guard, you know, Jordan Clarkson couldn't guard. They just had a bunch of dudes who couldn't slide their feet. It was like Royce O'Neill was the only guy

who could like, really guard, you know, for that team. And so, you know, in this particular type of scheme, like, I think there's a reason why Minnesota has consistently all year looked fantastic when it's Nas Reed and Dante DiVincenzo. It's because it's just a bunch of elite perimeter defenders and the ability to space the floor with Nas's shooting ability. All right. What suggestion do you have for changing the Knicks starting and closing lineups? What do you think of changing out Hart for Deuce in the starting lineup just to keep up with the Pacers during that time, then win the minute.

with Mitch, closing with Mitch, OG, Deuce, McHale, and Brunson. So this is the thing. Mitchell Robinson, to me, is very much a player that relies on exerting energy. And by the way, if you pull up his numbers from last night in the second half, he had, I think one offensive rebound, I think he had one block. And I think he was minus seven in his minutes. He was dominant in his first half stretch. The thing with Mitch is I think you want to keep his minutes in that like 18 to 22 range because that's where he is most effective with his motor.

You want him playing, you know, basically two shifts a game, right? You know, bridging the first and second quarters and bridging the third and fourth quarters. Like that's what you want. And again, there's a conversation to be had about the big picture in terms of whether or not you should try to find a player that can kind of approximate what Mitch does, but is capable of playing 30, 35 minutes a night. but within this scale of this within the scope of this particular postseason series you know Mitch played what 29 minutes I think in game in game two like and in those final minutes you know in his 26 27 28 29th minute that was when he was like leaving seeacum and leaving turner open and making a couple of it of sketchy decisions defensively and like help and recover situations so like

I think if you're going to try to close with Mitch, which by the way opens up some other problems in terms of spacing, but if you close with Mitch, you want to make sure that he's closing within the scope of a minute load that he can handle. And so it's one thing to say, let's put Deuce in the starting lineup. I think Deuce can handle heavy minutes. And the reality is is Josh Hart is just not doing enough damage offensively out there in his minutes. but with Mitch in particular, I don't think you want to be necessarily closing with him unless you can keep his minutes down. And so he might just have to get kind of creative with the rotation in order to make that happen.

All right, let me double check really quick to make sure I didn't miss any. Are there any defensive adjustments you think the Knicks can make versus Indy or are they just going to have to try to beat them in shootouts? I'm going to be honest with you guys. If you watch the film from the first two games of this series, Cat is like utterly lost on the defensive end of the,

for. He looks like he has no idea what he wants to do. He's like, I saw some clips, uh, some defensive clips from game two where like he threw some of the worst high drop kind of hedge blitz, whatever you want to call him type of looks I've ever seen where he's coming out way too high. And then in rotation, he's just kind of running around like a chicken with his head cut off. And then like the ball will go in the basket or a cutter will catch it open. He kind of just looks around like, like what do you guys want me to do? And it just, he just looks lost out there. And so I, you know, if you ask me what was the best possible game plan to try to proceed with moving forward, to me it would be with that, it would just be switching everything to prevent the obvious drop coverage looks that you can get

and then just communicate like crazy behind cat to make sure that he doesn't get lost. But it's when he's in these two-on-the-ball situations and he has to rotate that he's getting lost. And so I would just, you know, try as hard as you can to turn Indiana into an ISO team. And the best way to do that is by switching. but there are some realities to the fact that, you know, I saw someone say, I saw a Celtics fan say, or a Pacer's fan say on Twitter, like, this is going to be very different than keeping Tatum in front. And I was like, when I read that, I was like, I was trying to tell you guys this.

Like, it's a very different series. Like, it's the Celtics succumb to switching. They allow switching to stagnate them because they want to play one-on-one. And, yeah, Tatum and Brown are two guys that will absolutely settle. if you slide your feet reasonably well. The pacer's do not succumb to switching until the end of the clock. Or for a very deep post-up. They are a team that plays with so much pace and verve in the half court.

They'll make you execute 15 to 20 switches before the end of the possession. In inevitably, you're going to fuck one of them up. And when you do, now they don't have to play ISO ball. They can play drive and pick out of that. And so, again, like, it's just, it's a really tough matchup. with cat out there. And you can't just like bench cat. You don't have the depth for that.

And so like, you know, honestly, like, all that you, all you can hope for is that they just play better, that they do a better job within their scheme. By the way, like, I, I think the Knicks have a decent chance to win tomorrow night. Like, I, I'm not going to sit here and be surprised if the Knicks win tomorrow night. Now, like, I feel almost certain that Indiana is going to get one of those two games, which means they're going to be up three one, which means they're going to probably go to the finals. But, like, there's, the series isn't over.

you just got to take it one game at a time. But it's just the construct of this team depends too much on Jalen Brunson and and Carl Anthony Towns to be attentive and focused and to give the requisite intensity in their rotations and the two of them are just not good at that. And so it just to me looks like a matchup that's going to be tough for them to overcome. All right, guys, that's all we have for right now. We're going to head over to playback. Again, that's playback.

dot TV slash hoops tonight. We'll hang out there for about 45 minutes or so. We've been taking callers and watching some film. Again, as always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We will see you guys next time. What's up, guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops Tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review.

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