Hoops Tonight - Anthony Edwards & KAT lead Wolves into tough series with Ja Morant's Grizzlies

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at the volume, I'm Jason tim Tappy Wednesday. Everybody. Today, we're just gonna be breaking down that extremely interesting basketball game last night between the Clippers and the Minnesota Timberwolves,

which did not go the way that I expected. Will get into why here just a minute, and then we're gonna break down what I think is going to be a very interesting first round playoff series between the Timberwolves and the Memphis Grizzlies a to seven matchup, But I think the teams are a little bit closer than they appear on the surface. We will get into that, but

let's start with last night. So I picked the Clippers, and the main reason why is because, as you guys know, if you've listened to the show for a while, I'm a huge believer in the Clippers system. I think they're extremely well coached. Tyler, even after last night, is fast becoming one of my favorite coaches in all of basketball. His understanding of the way the game is changing and his willingness to adapt with the game rather than than being caught behind is why I'm drawn to him so much.

And then I knew it would be relatively close with it being a road matchup in Minnesota and the way that they would play in front of their home crowd in terms of their energy, and so what it came down to for me was when the game was close. Basketball games always come down to decision making. It's not neces necessarily even about a skill set. It's about decision making because even very skilled players can make poor decisions, especially when they're young. Even in that Brooklyn Nets Cavaliers

game that we talked about last night. You know, Darius Garland is a very skilled player, but he's young, and I thought his approach to attacking the Nets defense wasn't the smartest approach. It's something that five ten years from now, he's gonna be so savvy with his you know, ability to dissect NBA defenses that he'll be able to handle that.

But right now he's not capable of that. So what I was thinking was, you got Reggie Jackson, who's not an amazing basketball player compared to his peers in the NBA, but he's an average NBA point guard. But he's a veteran player at this point with a lot of playoff reps. And then you've got Paul George, who we can make fun of his playoff past, but he completely shed that last year. This is a guy that is as reliable as you can have in those situations, and he was

excellent last night. So I was sitting there thinking, like, I've got a really young guard and Anthony Edwards and another kind of young guard in D'Angelo Russell who doesn't have a ton of playoff experience versus two guys who played really well in the playoffs last year, Paul George, with a ton of playoff experience and probably just better basketball players, and those guys are gonna be the ones

determining shot quality down the stretch of the game. And so I was under the impression that that would tilt towards the Clippers, and I was very wrong. And there are a couple of different reasons for that. First of all, when Karl Anthony Towns went out, and you know, we can have a separate conversation about Karl Anthony Towns here in a second, but he kind of checked out of that game mentally in a lot of different ways, and

we'll get into that. But when he went down, you saw a different concoction of players that Minnesota went with. There was a lot of nos Reid, there's a lot of going with you know, more at length and athleticism and made it so that they could switch more easily. And the Minnesota Timberwolves are really good dribble contained team. And we'll talk about this a little bit more when

we get into previewing their first round series. But they give up the sixth fewest drives according to the NBA NBA's tracking database, they get up the sixth fewest drives in UH in all of basketball this year. So their perimeter players do a good job of containing ball handlers. So when you got rid of Karl Anthony Towns and you went more athletic, those five guys did a lot more switching, and they're so good at dribble contain that it put a lot on Paul George and Reggie Jackson.

And what you saw was Paul George was able to get to his pull up jump shot, but the few times that he tried to drive to the basket, I thought Jared Vanderbilt did an Excuse me, Jade McDaniels did a really nice job of funneling him behind the backboard to where he couldn't really do anything. So he turned Paul George into a pull up jump shooter, which, because Paul George is one of the best players in the n b A, he still made a bunch of those shots.

And you know, special shout out to Paul George. I am so utterly blown away by how polished he is at this point in his career. If you look at the way he what he looked like coming out of college, kind of was similar to Quiet a lot of ways where he was more of just like a NBA teams didn't really know what he was gonna be. Just a big athletic forward, could do some stuff with the basketball,

but you didn't know what he was gonna be. The amount of work that he had to put in over the course of this last decade to polish his handle in his jump shot to the point where he can get to any dribble combination, in any jump shot, in any spot on the floor. Just a huge shout out to Paul George. I was blown away yet again by him last night. He's one of my favorite players in the league, and I think he's so incredibly fun and appealing to watch. But Jared Jared Vanderbilt, excuse, excuse me,

Jaden McDaniels, I keep getting these athletic forwards confused. Jaden McDaniels did an amazing job of forcing Paul George into becoming a jump shooter. And then overall, Patrick Beverley did an amazing job on Reggie Jackson making everything difficult for him. I thought his ball pressure wore Reggie Jackson down to the point where he was struggling to finish at the rim.

There was that actually a key possession late where he got a step and got all the weight to the rim and missed the layup, which is a textbook case of you losing your legs as the game goes along. Meanwhile, on the other end, the two guys that I thought would be not up to this challenge played extremely well, and that's Anthony Edwards and D'Angelo Russell. We're gonna mainly focus on Anthony Edwards. So D'Angelo Russell made two huge

shots at the end of that game. There's that pull up transition three that he made that gave the Wolves the lead and kind of changed the complexion of the game. And then there was that pull up jumper hit going to the right towards the end. I kind of iced the game, but Anthony Edwards. The game turned when Anthony Edwards understood finally that nobody on that entire Clippers roster could prevent him from getting to the rim. And it's the combination of his size and strength with his speed.

He's got an incredibly quick first step, as well as his ability to handle the basketball and his threat as a jump shooter that opens all of this up. This is something that I talk about all the time, especially with James Harden. There's a dynamic that takes place in individual defense. There's like a pendulum that swings one way

or the other. When a defender feels confident in his ability to keep a player in front, he can press up more, which disrupts the jump shot, takes away the ability to comfortably dribble the basketball, and it'll it gives the defensive player of the advantage. One of the issues with James Harden. He can't beat people off the dribble anymore, so defenders are crowding him more, which is making it a lot harder for him to make his step back jump shot, and it's taking away a lot of his

ability to play make for his teammates well. Anthony Edwards is the idea of the opposite end of that pendulum. When the defensive player knows that they can't keep a player in front, they have to give more space, a lot more space. Think about think of it like football

a tackle. Usually a tackle has a massive size advantage over a defensive end, but a defensive end is usually way quicker, and so a lot of times you'll see tackles kind of get as far off the line of scrimmage while the rest will allow them to still be considered on the line of scrimmage, to try to buy just a little bit of extra space because they know that first step that they take back is not going to be as quick as the first step that the

defensive end takes. They're trying to compensate for their lack of speed with more space. It's very similar concept in individual defense. If I don't think I'm nearly as quick as you, I need to give ground so that if you try to take an angle to beat me to the basket, I have a shorter distance to cover to get there, so that I can make up for it

with my lack of speed. And so what you're seeing with guys like Anthony Edwards is defenders are constantly on their heels, which not only opens up his pull up jump shot. He had a huge step back three at the end of that game that he was wide open on and had tons of space because the defender was on his heels. And then what you're noticing is Anthony Edwards when he hits that whole even though the defenders giving ground, even though the defenders trying to beat him

to the spot. He's so strong that he can just go right through people, and so it can puts you in an awful conundrum. It's very similar to the Lebron James type of dynamic. He's not Lebron James, obviously, he's a lot smaller, but it's a similar dynamic. At the guard position, he's big and strong and he's so fast that you have to give ground. But when you give ground, he comes at you with the head of steam. And when he comes at you with a head of steam,

he can go through you. And that's what makes him such a dynamic player. Obviously, he's going to have to improve as a jump shooter as time goes on in order to reach his overall ceiling. But he hit a ceiling that I didn't think he was capable of at this point in his career. He was able to outplay Paul George and Reggie Jackson in a pivotal playoff game, which turned the outcome of that game. I was predicting the Clippers because I believed in their perimeter decision makers,

and I was wrong. Anthony Edwards arguably was the best player at the end of that game. That was my bad. I was off on that that's why Minnesota was able to get a win. One last note on that game before we move on to breaking down the Wolves in the Grizzly series. Karl Anthony Towns. Do I think the Timberwolves are better without Karl Anthon Town's. No, do I think that Karl Anthony Towns is as bad as he

showed last night. No, everyone who's I've I had like two or three games when I was in college when I got in foul trouble. Foul trouble is a complete It completely screws up your head because all you can think about when you're on the floor is your foul count. It disrupts everything that you're trying to do on the floor, All those long breaks you have to take while you're coaching staff is trying to figure out when to play

you massively disrupts your rhythm. You don't feel comfortable when you have the ball in your hands because you haven't been on the floor very much. And yes, once again, you're thinking about your foul trouble the whole time. You're paranoid that if you drive to the basket, make an aggressive move, the dude will flop and you'll pick up an offensive foul. It can be it can be disastrous to your confidence on the court. So I want to

cut Cat some slack. But there's a reason why the Timberwolves played better without him, and it's something that he's gonna have to understand as he develops further into his career. You have to have something that you can rely on when your offensive game isn't working, and that has to become the defensive end of the floor for him. He's

become a better defensive player. He's played better defense this year than he has in years passed, but he's got to get to the point where when his shots not falling, when his offensive rhythm is off, he has to find a way to impact the game more than he has been, and a big part of that is going to be working on his foot speed and being able to keep people in front on the perimeter, because Minnesota is a very good perimeter defense team, and if he could move

his feet like that, they could do more switching, which would get rid of some of his limitations as a pick and roll defender. When he plays traditional pick and roll coverages. He's just not quite athletic enough, especially from a standing vert, to be able to disrupt plays around the rim. So it would be easier if you could do more switching, especially with all of the dribble contained guys they have on the roster, if Cat could switch

as well. So that's the thing he's gonna have to work on, is he gets better, because when he does that, he'll be able to derive confidence from the way he's playing on defense, which will help him avoid games like he had last night. But let's move on to what I think is gonna be a very interesting first round series between the Wolves and the Grizzlies. So I think this is gonna be a super interesting series, especially as

a two seven matchup goes. If you look at it on the surface, you think way better basketball team Grizzlies are gonna run away with it. I think it's gonna be closer than people think. First of all, I'm picking the Grizzlies think they'll win in five or six games. But I think the games are all gonna be very competitive, and I do think it's gonna be a much more entertaining series than the outcome would would imply. First of all, home team won all four games this year. They split

the season series to two. That's not entirely uncommon for a young team that's athletic. Both of these teams are young and athletic for them to feed on the home crowd and to play well when they're at home, This series is going to be crazy up and down. These are two of the fastest pace teams that we have in the league. The Timberwolves are actually the fastest pace and the Grizzlies are the fourth fastest pace. So expected to be up and down, super athletic, high flying, very entertaining.

It'll be a fun series to watch. Like I did with the other series, what I'd like to do is split this into two sections. So we'll look at it with the Timberwolves on defense, and then we'll look at it with the Grizzlies on defense. So let's start with the Timberwolves on defense. So they were and defensive rating this year, which is okay when you dive into the numbers.

They were okay in paint points allowed, they were eleventh in the league, especially when you factor in Karl Anthony Towns as your back line defender there, who's been better this year than he was in years past, but still not an elite rim protector by any stretch of the imagination. So the credit for that goes to the perimeter players. As I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the Clippers game, the Timberwolves were sixth and drives allowed per

game per the NBA dot COM's tracking data. That data cannot be filtered for pace either with the way that the website is set up. So when you factor in that the Timberwolves played the fastest pace in the NBA, they're probably a top two or three team in the league waited for pace in containing ball handlers on the perimeter,

in limiting dribble drives. You saw that in that Clippers game tonight, making things very very difficult on Reggie Jackson and turning Paul George into a jump shooter, which is a huge part of why they were able to come back and win that game. That's gonna be an interesting, interesting dynamic against the Grizzlies, who rely on John Morant as a dribble penetrator. You know, Desmond Baine is not a great, you know, dribble penetrator in terms of isolation possessions.

He's more of a slasher kind of attacking closeouts and things like that. Jaren Jackson Jr. Is more of like a mismatch attacker, trying to put his head down and go to the rim. So I think it's gonna put a strain on the Grizzlies defense and their ability to generate rim pressure. This is where it's going to be

the test on John Moran. I've said many times that John Morant is the kind of guy that nobody can keep in front, and we're gonna put that to the test in this series against a very very good dribble contain team. I would imagine you'll see a mix of guys like Patrick Beverley on him and then more long athletes as well to try to change things up. They did a really nice job of turning John Morand into

a jump shooter in their matchups this year. In matchups specifically with the Timberwolves John Ran, it was three for twenty from three. Like I said, I expect John Morand to eventually be a very good three point shooter, but he's in that inconsistent phase of shooting development. Young players always struggle with replicating their success. They tinker with their form too much. It's a big part of why they get inconsistent. John rand is kind of in that phase.

So huge part of this series is gonna be is John Morand shooting well at this point in time or is he shooting poorly? Because I would imagine part of the game plan to try to help contain John Morand is gonna be going underneath screens and forcing him to be a jump shooter. The biggest weakness of the Timberwolves defense happens to be a thing that the Grizzlies aren't

great at. It's kind of a similar dynamic that I was looking at in the Chicago Bulls in the Milwaukee Bucks series, like you can't beat your honest because he's way better than you, but maybe your team has a weakness or their team as a weakness that your team has a strength and can compensate for some of that

talent difference. The Milwaukee Bucks give up the most wide open threes and all of basketball, like I've said so many times this year, and the Chicago Bulls are dead last and three pointers attempted per games, So the Chicago Bulls aren't going to generate enough threes to capitalize on Milwaukee Milwaukee's greatest weakness. Similar kind of dynamic here. The Timberwolves are not a great three point defense. They give up the fourth most wide open threes in basketball, and

they give them up to the wrong people. Their sixth and three point percentage allowed on those wide open three so they're not leaving the right guys open, if that makes sense. But the problem is Memphis is twenty three and three pointers attempted per games, so their team doesn't generate a ton of three point shots again waited for pace that could be even worse. So on the defensive end of the floor for the Timberwolves, I actually think they're gonna hold their own. This is gonna be a

really really interesting dynamic there. It's the other end of the floor where the Grizzlies are on defense where I think they have their biggest advantage. So when you look at the Grizzlies defense, it's interesting because they're sixth and defensive rating, But when you kind of dive into it, there's a lot of things that they're pretty average at. Their average paint defense, their average allowing dribble drives, their average defensive rebounding team, which is an important part of

finishing defensive possessions. The key to the Grizzlies defense and the reason why they are so good is they defend the three point line well, and they get out in transition their second and turnovers forced, and they don't give up a ton of wide open threes. It's a huge part of why their defense has held together despite being average in a bunch of other places on the floor. I think a huge part of this defense is gonna be how the types of threes that they give up.

So Minnesota leads the league this year and three pointers attempted and three pointers made, so Minnesota generates a ton of three point shots more than anybody else in the entire league. But Anthony Edwards and D'angela Russell are bad pull up jump shooters. So there are sixty players this year in the entire NBA that have attempted at least five pull up jump shots per game. D'angela Russell's only shooting thirty on those pull up jump shots, which is

forty five out of those sixty qualifying players. Anthony Edwards dead last thirty two point five percent. So even though they're a great three point shooting team in their driving kick game, they are not a good pull up shooting team. With their two primary ball handlers, that kind of puts them in a predicament that I think Memphis is gonna be able to figure out how to shut them down. First of all, we talked about this earlier with Karl

Anthony Towns. We won't get too much into it further, but curly, Karl Anthony Towns is at his best when he's operating on the low block, when you crowd him. He's not a great passer and he struggles with all that length and athleticism. You saw the Clippers do that to him last night. I think Memphis will do that to him as well in this game, in this particular matchup. So a lot is going to be put on Anthony Edwards in D'Angelo Russell. Again, in last night, they made

enough shots. D'Angel Russell and Anthony Edwards made big, pivotal pull up shots, but for the most part this season they haven't. And in this particular matchup this season against the Memphis Grizzlies, part of the reason why they went to and two is D'Angel Russell and Anthony Edwards were making jump shots in those games in particular. But that's four games out of eight. Two You're gonna play him seven times in a row. Now, it'll be interesting. To

see if they can knock down shots. The key to Minnesota having any chance of winning this series, it's Anthony Edwards and D'angela Russell making jump shots as Memphis packs the paint and goes under screening rolls and does all those things to try to take away the easy stuff that they can generate, especially with Anthony Edwards in the threat that he is putting his head down and driving

to the rim. Like I talked about in the Clippers game, the game turned when Anthony Edward started putting his head down and going to the rim. But he has a tendency to settle a lot. It's been one of his issues in his young development. Not a criticism, it's typical for young players. It's part of that decision making thing we were talking about earlier. So a huge part of this series for Minnesota to have any chance will be

Anthony Edwards continuing to apply rim pressure. If he does that, it will help them to develop the generate those wide open threes. Also, it makes it so that Anthony Edwards gets high quality um pull up jump shots, so kind of like that James Harden dynamic that I was talking about earlier. That's gonna be the interesting dynamic in this series.

One of the better three point defense teams in the league in Memphis, going against the team that generates the most three point shots and three point makes in the league. This is this side of the floor is where I think Memphis is gonna take control of the series and end up winning. I see this series going five or six games. I do think Memphis ends up winning it, but I think all the games individually will be competitive and highly entertaining. Up and down basketball athletic above the

rim should be a really really interesting series. Alright, guys, that is all I have for today. I appreciate your guys support as always, and I'll see you tomorrow.