The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Hoops Tonight - Timberwolves-Nuggets Reaction: Jokic SENSATIONAL, Denver becoming unbeatable?, Pacers-Knicks Reaction: Brunson DROPS 44, New York's MAJOR Game 5 bounce back

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

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 Timeline (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements) 05:00 - Nuggets-Timberwolves reaction 29:30 - Knicks-Pacers reactionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Good to Hoops tonight here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great night. Got a jam-pack show for you tonight. We're going to be breaking down that epic 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 Nicola Yokitch in his career, we're going to 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. Just got to go a little bit further back.

Broke it down. Did some film in that one, too, surrounding Deuce McBride and an action that the Knicks were spamming at the beginning of that game to take advantage of Tyreys Halliburton in an opening in Indiana's coverage to make sure you don't miss that earlier on the feed. hitting Denver, Minnesota in this one. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to our brand of 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 a podcast feed, wherever you get your podcasts under hoops tonight. And then keep dropping mailbag questions and 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 of watching Anthony Edwards, barbecue, buddy, 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 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 ants super high drop coverage with Nicola Yokic to just make sure that aunt was almost picking up his dribble every time he'd 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 force that 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 aunt had has destroyed the smaller Denver guards throughout the majority of the series.

And at the beginning of the game, Michael Malone and the Nuggets paid the price for that. Because as I talked about last game, Carl 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 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 and gets 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, that's good.

If Aaron Gordon's in help elsewhere and he has an opportunity to attack a close out, that's good, right? Same goes for guys like Nikiel Alexander Walker, right? And both of them had big bounce back games tonight. Nikiel Alexander Walker hit four threes at 14 points. Carl Towns had 23 points on over 50% shooting. So early on, they paid the price for 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 55 to 53 lead, right? And it starts to feel a little bit more like game one of this series, right? But we get a timeout. 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, of NBA coaches. We're going to have to take a deeper look at that when we get to the offseason. But he calls a timeout, refocuses the guys. They immediately come out. Aaron Gordon scores on a post up against Carl Anthony Towns. They immediately go on 11 to 2 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. You know, transition defense principles tell you to take away the rim first. And Yokic is an excellent transition 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, started to get their defense set. Those first few Minnesota offensive possessions out of that timeout were really ugly. There was a Rudy Gobert post up of Nicola Yokic in there where he ended up throwing a late, you know, basically a late grenade to kill Alexander Walker on the left wing that he missed. There was like a random McKeel Alexander Walker ball screen where he took a tough contested mid-arranged jump shot. Again, Minnesota's offensive personnel is pretty limited. And when Denver really tightens the screws, they 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 Nicole Yokic. It's just classic Denver Nuggets basketball. And, you know, honestly, like, that really has been the story 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 20, it's boom, time out, quick adjustment, refocus, lock in and go on a run.

They've just consistently been able to do that. As a matter of fact, I was pulling the numbers on Synergy earlier. So this is before tonight, although they not only did they 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 10. They immediately came out of the timeout and scored. According to Synergy, the Nuggets are scoring 1.17 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 at 1.04 points per possession.

So literally a 13 point per 100 possession gap between Boston and Denver at 1-2 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. Maybe they don't get back in transition. Maybe they take a couple of bad shots. Things can get a little ugly. It's like, oh, here's a random Michael Porter Jr., you know, 27 foot heave pivoting over his left shoulder, right? or something like that.

But it's like there's always 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 do what they need to do and they regain control of the game. That to me is 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 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, or excuse me, like Jeff Green with like a really good 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 10 defense this year. And again, like, this was a team that wasn't a top 10 defense last year that kind of snapped into form. They were a switch flipping team when they got into 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. It's usually like the first time you win, you're this top 10. 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. But it's been very clear that they've been locked in. Honestly, like, I think the Jamal Murray injury this season and them losing to some good teams got people off the scent a little bit of Denver, but I think they've been generally locked in the majority of the season. I want to talk about Nicole Yokic is a score because he just had a ridiculous scoring game. Obviously, it goes for 40 points 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 Yok is such a good score because we talk 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 like kind of funky footwork too.

Like if he goes over his left shoulder, it's like the Sombor shuffle, right? When he 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. But what I want to focus on is on his footwork. You know, I thought it was really interesting. There was a quote from Michael Malone. 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 did some different things offensively and defensively, but give our players credit because they realized what we were doing and how in how we were doing it

wasn't the answer. So what I thought was really fascinating about that quote is 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. And really the big thing that stood out to me on film when we looked at game three was they set better screens, particularly Oak it's opening tip just rocked Anthony Edwards with the 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 Edwards, which allowed their offense to start working.

And then even extending to the defensive end of the floor, just like, you know, guys like KCP and Aaron Gordon sending early messages to Carl Anthony Towns and he can't score on them on an island and just kind of tightening that defensive 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. It wasn't some magical adjustments. 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 talk about this crazy dribble move that he made, right? We talk about Jason Tatum. Here's this crazy step back three that he hits. We talk about, you know, Steph Curry. It's this 30-footer that he hits in transition off the bounce. We talk about Nicole Yokic. It's the somber shuffle, this incredible fadeaway jumper that he hits off a one leg

leaning away from the basket. But usually the 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 make a basketball player more reliably great on a possession by possession basis. Yokic, 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. There are a lot of guys out there that have a lot of physical tools that can't take advantage of them. Look at Rudy Gobert. 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 Yoak kitchen just quick shuffled before he made a kickout pass. It's because he's so uncoordinated 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. Footwork is the that connects your natural gifts with the ability to actually get to spots on the floor. And Nicole Yokic has amazing footwork.

When you guard post players that are bigger than you, it's all about disrupting the base. I know this for my personal experience. When I played in college, I was an undersized big. I played a lot of four and five at six, six, two hundred and twenty 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 bumped 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. That you can't do that with Yokic. His base is not disruptable.

When he goes downhill and he makes a pivot move, the guy will try to cut him off and try to bump him and Yokich bumps you off. that really is the core of all of it. And the ability to maintain your base is a footwork thing, right? 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 going to be able to do that is if you constantly rep out every single drop step to the left, drop step to the right, every single step through, which is basically just like a pivot over one shoulder, a quick plant, and then another. pivot towards the basket. Yokic 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

quick plants, but he's always back on two feet so that no one can shove him off of his spot. 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 Yokic up top. But what Yokich does is he disrupts Gober. Bears base and gets him off of his stable foundation where he can jump and meet Yokic up top. And so as a result, when Yokic goes to shoot, Gobert is groundbound. He's groundbound because Yokic just bumped him right at the time that he would typically jump to try to make a play. He is a master of physical leverage in footwork.

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 when you have physical tools. 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 score. When you become an unstoppable score, you will start to bring multiple defenders. When you bring multiple defenders and you learn to read the floor, then you become truly.

guardable. And Yokic just has that unique combination of like transcendent physical size. Like he's just so much bigger than everybody that that tries to guard him. Incredible detail footwork and fundamental like a fundamental foundation of his skills and then outstanding touch within 10, 15 feet of the rim. Right. We talked about game four. He was 10 for 15 within five feet and 14 feet from the basket. He is deadly in that range. He's going to 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 go at Gobert.

He did. It was just, you know, again, I talked about this after game too. Like, I was really interested to see how Yokic 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 Yokic said, hell no, you're not. and 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 2010s. And you could argue it's even bigger than that. Have you seen anybody play basketball this year that has been able to reach the level that Nicole Yokic has been at in the last three games? 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 parity in the game. don't see a team just run rough shot over the league and win 15 straight playoff games. Because when this team is down 2-0 and legacies are on the line and people are talking shit for three days in the media and all of that is coming down on you, that is what pushed Nicole Yokic to this level. It required adversity to bring out another level of Nicole Yokic 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, Contavius Caldopo. I thought every single shot he hit in this, you know, it's funny. Did you guys remember that Jada McDaniels 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 16 points. Every shot he hit was loud. He hit a huge three above that above the break during that 11 to 2 run after the timeout when Minnesota went up 55, 53. 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 many moments in this series. I thought he had a big moment here in game five. Last note, 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' case after he had a bad game. here's the thing. Coming into tonight, he averaged 32, 7, and 6 on 67% true shooting against outstanding competition on a team that desperately needs him to score because they're a severely limited offensive team. He's also 22 years old. They're going to be growing pains along the way. Is he going to need to figure out how to be more effective in games when he gets

double-teamed like this? Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, I actually think that Michael Malone looked at the situation and goes, oh, Mike Connolly's not playing. Well, if Mike Connolly's not playing, there's not 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 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 and game four, the rest of the offense for Minnesota was so dead on a run. rival. Again, like, I was talking about in comparing him to Jason Tatum as it pertains to the future

of American basketball players. I like Jason Tatum a lot. I have no issues 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 Nicole Yokic. Anthony Edwards at age 22 at least has that potential. Anthony Edwards has 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 going to 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 that LeBron Steph KD group. And like, 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-ant 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.

Like, did you guys hear that interview at the start of the fourth quarter? Michael Malone straight up came out and said our entire defensive game plan is to stop Ant. He straight up said that. He literally said, we're throwing different looks at him. we're throwing second defenders at. Like, straight up said that. What does that tell you?

Michael Malone took a gamble tonight. We're going to get the ball out of Anthony Everett's hands and just try to make someone else beat us. And someone else did. And it was 55, 53 in the second half when in the two games in Minnesota, they weren't even competitive. So again, Anthony Edwards' 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 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 that half court surgeon like I talk about, right?

But like, again, here's what I think is lame. Jumping on Anthony Edwards' case and trying to rewrite the rise of this phase of his career when he averaged 32, 7, and 6 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 67% true shooting, by the way, Jason Tatum again last night, shot below 45% from the field.

He's done it 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 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, at three to Denver.

Minnesota can't score against Denver's defense when they're really locked in and engaged. I don't know how they solved that problem. I think it's really hard to beat a team four times in a row, so I wouldn't be surprised if Minnesota won game six. But it's hard for me to imagine Minnesota winning two in a row at this point when 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 bounce back game from Anthony Edwards. It's going to be a raucous crowd. Elimination 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 referred to it as the gangster sweep.

It's interesting because it's the sweep, the gentleman's sweep, which is when you win four 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 all games have been by double digits. Yeah, they won by 15 tonight. And I'm pretty sure game three and four were by double digits. So that would be, that would whoever coined that term, 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. 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 I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me,

Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

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Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, Follow at Clifford and a TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim?

Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam Jek. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick it here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack.

I'm down to talk about crack all day, but just so you all know. I mean, at this point, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you finishing that sentence. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Keer Games. And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we, are in possession of the thing.

And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid?

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Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. I don't want to get too far into the nitty gritty in this game, really, because the last couple of games, Game 4 in Indiana and Game 5 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 coming home. Also having lost two in a row, the desperation shifts heavily towards the Knicks. The Pacers have a little bit of comfort knowing that it's two, two, and you've got another game at home, right? And the Knicks just kind of capitalized on that. You know, there's a quote that I saw from the pregame presser from Mike Malone tonight. night. Michael Malone head coach of the 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, 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. It wasn't 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 Deuce McBride joining the starting lineup, how that allowed the Knicks to attack Tyrese Halliburton, you know, Jalen Brunson kind of getting that early foul on Aaron Neesmith, leading him to Rick Carlisle to

shift to Andrew Nembard on the ball and some stuff about Tyrese Halliburton 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 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 more than it probably actually relates to the outcomes of a lot of these games. Say, for instance, the story of this game is going to be Deuce McBride joining the starting lineup and everything he did

tonight, guarding Tyrus Halliburton, the attacking Halliburton when he was hedging and blitzing and Deuce McBride quickly kind of like slipping out of those actions, right? But here's the thing. they got off to a 20 to 14 start. The Pacers were up 20 to 14 in this game. So like, like in Juice McBride still was playing a lot. We said after, I think it was in game three, I said now that O.G. and Obie's out, the best five-man group that the Knicks have is Deuce McBride, Dante DeVincenzo, Josh Hart, Jalen Brunson, and Isaiah Hardenstein.

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, generally speaking, the team that wins. It has more to do with who's playing the best basketball in 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 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 the game more so than any sort of tactic right you know like i literally thought the the 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 jemal mary 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. 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, that took place in this game. So, So Deuce McBride did an amazing job defending Tyrus Halliburton and played him into some of his worst tendencies which have to do with 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 Deuce McBride was helping with was he was being guarded by Tyrese Halliburton. And there's two things that you absolutely have to be able to do when you're 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, Tyrese Halliburton is either going to jump out to cut off the driving lane or jump out to blitz, meaning leaving Deuce McBride. You have to be able to hit 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 Deuce 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 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 Knicks tonight. Jalen Brunson was amazing again. Another 40 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 Rick Harlisle to bail on Aaron East Smith with about eight minutes and 30 seconds left in the first quarter after he picked up a foul on him on an and one. The paces were up 12 to 9 at that point. and Brunson had only made one field goal, but I guess that Ricard, I 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 Nemhard. He had an in and out dribble on him where he literally like in and outed them hard and

Nirmard went 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 Tyrese Halliburton's 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 Deuce McBride, you know, kind of making

Tyrese Halliburton pay for his hedges and his blitzes. Tyreselliburton's passivity. 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 than like I'm a pretty OCD guy, right? 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. You know, I have a certain way that I organize. A simple thing, my wife had to borrow my truck to go to Lowe's the other day and I took my basketball bag out of that truck to take her car instead. Then when I went back into my truck, I didn't take my basketball bag with me. So the 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 and 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 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? 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 a lot. They tend to make mistakes. They tend to foul too much. Those are all characteristics of high motor players because they're always going 100 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 and some of the emotional elements. But as we know, that can lead to technical's, overly physical play, getting themselves ejected or suspended, right? That's a downside of the super emotional players, right?

Assassin-minded scores 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 like Nicole Yokic, 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. There were times where early in the Timberwolf series where you're like, why is Nicole Yokic 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 Tyrese Halliburton, he takes nine shots tonight. You take nine shots on the road in a two-two game when your offense is struggling to score.

That's part of your job as the offensive engine. He's been taking 11 threes a game over the last few weeks and hitting over 40% of them. And he only took four of them tonight. Now, some of that is a credit to Deuce 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 Yokic did in this series, and we know that he's capable of. Tyrese, 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.

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. I think the Pacers will probably extend this series to seven just because it's a short-handed Knicks 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, my pick for the Knicks to win the series. I just think they'll probably do it in seven. The volume. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel 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, reader Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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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 I-Hard 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,

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