Hoops Tonight - Knicks beat Cavaliers, Hawks upset Celtics, Nuggets roll Timberwolves

This week, We're just gonna be breaking down all three games from last night. As the Knicks take a two to one lead over the Calves, the Atlanta Hawks get a game from Boston now that they trail two to one, and then the Nuggets take a three to zero lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves. You guys have the joke before we get started to subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason LT. So you guys don't

miss any show announcements. And for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these shows and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish. Don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts Under Hoops tonight, all right, let's talks and basketball. So this was an absolute defensive slug fest in Madison Square Garden between the Knicks and

the Cavs. You know, it's funny. I talk a lot about how, like when you see it the same defensive matchup time and time and time again, how defenders tend to start to pick up on your cues. The example I always used to use is like playing against your little brother, your older brother, or your older sister, younger sister.

When you're playing against a sibling every single day in your front yard, even if you're better than them, sometimes just because they play against you every day, then kind of pick up on your moves and figure out how to guard you, you know what I mean? And like that kind of dynamic takes place in a playoff series to a certain extent. You know, in the random comings and goings of the regular season, you bump into a guy once, you're not going to be necessarily ready to

guard him to the best of your ability. But man, come game three, come four, come Game five of a playoff series, you know all of his moves. You've picked up on everything. You're gonna do a much better job. And everybody in this series is struggling with their core matchups. Like both Quinton Grimes and Josh Hard have been giving Donovan Mitchell some problems, just chasing over the top of screens and forcing him into difficult pull up jump shots.

Jalen Brunson and Emmanuel Quickly have both done a great job on Darius Garland. You can see that RJ. Barrett has had some success guarding Krris Lavert. On the other end of the floor, Karris Lavert and Isaac Koro have both been giving Jalen Brunson some issues just with their length and athleticism. He's been doing better when he's trying to get off of those guys, but in his core

matchup he's struggling to get good shots against them. And then after game one, Evan Mobley struggled with Julius Randall. He's actually starting to have a lot of success with Julius Randall defensively, so all these guys are starting to kind of figure out their defensive matchups and the result was just this super low scoring, super ugly basketball game.

In MSG and I was actually messaging a buddy of mine and that I was talking about this particular series with and I told him as like, if Jalen Brunston and Julius Randall don't figure it out soon, they could be in some trouble because Donovan Mitchell was still kind of playing a little bit better than those other guys there in the beginning of this particular game, and right there in the second quarter, with about six minutes left,

Jalen Brunston finally started to find his groove. And I don't think it's a coincidence because I talked about this a lot before the series, But Jalen Brunson has a much more methodical approach to the way he attacks defenses, and I think he's smarter. It's textbook like work, smarter, not harder kind of thing. Like Donovan Mitchell is unquestionably a better player that is capable of making that is

capable of generating more separation and making tougher shots. He's got all of the talent in the world, but sometimes he makes it so difficult on himself in a way

that's not necessarily needed under the circumstances. Jalen Brunson. You'll notice in this series he's not isolating Carris Lavert or Isaaca Coorro unless he absolutely has to, like if it's a late cl like there was a play in the second quarter he calls up Donovan Mitchell to try to get Donovan Mitchell on a switch and a screen, and Mitchell's doing this like hedge and recover thing, and he can't get Mitchell on the switch, and suddenly there's like five seconds left and he's at the top of the

key and he's got Karris Lavert, so he's got to take him to work. And he actually scored on this one with like a really nice up and undermove. But he's not doing that unless he has to. There's no point in taking that super difficult shot until the end of the shot clock when you've tried everything else and

around that, he's finding smart ways to attack. Early in that shift in the mid second quarter, he calls up Darius Garland into the screen, rejects the screen, gets downhill, gets Jared Allen to step up, drops it off to Isaiah Hartenstein. He gets a dunk. Then we have that play that I told you guys about where it isolates

Karris Lavert. Very next possession, he calls up Donovan Mitchell again and knows that he's gonna hedge because he just had tried that same hedge and recover move twice on the previous position and Jalen Brnson couldn't actually get him on the switch. So he calls him up again, and he knows that if he stunts to one side, he's gonna be able to get Donovan Mitchell to hedge out to that side, which is going to create an opening.

So he does this hard in and out dribble with his left hand to the right side, and Donovan Mitchell hedges out to that right side, and Jalen Brunston just goes back to the left instead. I think r J. Barrett was setting the screen. RJ. Barrett gets a really good screen on Karis Lavert. Suddenly Jaln Brunson is completely downhill, engages mobilely, makes a really nice kickout pass to Julius

Randall in the corner. He knocks down the three. Then Cheddy Osmon checks into the game and immediately Jalen Brunson calls Cheddy Osmond into the screen, gets him on a switch, hits him with this nasty like double between the legs crossover move and gets all the way to the rim and lays it in. Like again, everyone is struggling, but it makes sense to me that Jalen Brunson was the first guy to kind of figure it out, so to speak.

He just a little bit smarter in his approach, a little bit more versatile in the way that he's that he attacks. You know, one of the things that stood out to me in a big way in this particular game, and really in this series overall so far, it's just how much more comfortable the Knicks are playing multiple different

styles offensively. Like, obviously the Knicks can run pick and roll, and they're gonna run a lot of pick and roll, but they are way more comfortable attacking matchups in isolation. As a matter of fact, the Cavs have only run sixteen ISOs in this entire series. The Knicks have run forty, so more than twice as much, and they're scoring and

just under a point per possession in those ISOs. And that's because they're just more comfortable with guys like Julius Randall, Jalen Brunson, and RJ Barrett attacking specific matchups that they like. It gives them more versatility in their offense, and it's a big part of why I picked them to win this series. R J. Barrett finally got it going in

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

was done in pick and roll. The Cavs ran forty five pick and roles in this game and scored just twenty five points on them. That's including passes, so that's zero point five to six points per possession and pick and roll. That's almost half what you would hope for in that type of play type. The most concerning part in general from Cleveland coming out of this series so far through three games is their offensive struggles primarily have to do with their two best guards, with Garland and Mitchell.

You know, it's funny. Coming into the series, we thought it'd be the opposite of that problem. We thought it would be the inability of the role players to convert point a spot of possessions and rollman possessions into points. We thought that would be the issue. That has not been the issue at all. The Cavs role players played really well in spot up situations. In fact, they're averaging

well over a point per possession in those situations. The role players are doing their jobs, they're shooting well, that's not the issue. The issue is Darius Garland can't make a shot, shooting thirty seven percent in the series. And Donovan Mitchell, despite having a little bit better statistical series than you would think, he's just not managing games well and he's not making very good decisions, and so there's not very much rhythm and flow in their offense. He

forces it sometimes when they shouldn't. The one time he played advantage creation basketball in Game two and really focused on just creating that initial advantage to get the defense and rotation to help his team, that was the time the Cavs won. And again, like you know, the same buddy, I was texting earlier, he made a really interesting point.

He goes it kind of feels like Julius or in fact, it kind of feels like Donovan Mitchell's trying to have a moment in the garden, And yeah, like probably, but not a good idea under the circumstances, especially since like the team plays their best when they have more flow offensively from Donovan Mitchell acting as an advantage creator. As of right now, I feel pretty good about my prediction about with the Knicks winning and six. My guess is they win Game four, lose Game five, and then win

Game six to win the series. All right, Moving on to Celtics Hawks. This was a bizarre game. The Celtics were like disgustingly hot from three in the first half, and none of the Hawks starters were playing particularly well. They were kind of playing a little bit off at de Jontay Murray and trying to bait him into some longer contested jump shots and making him a little bit hesitant on how to attack. The guy who really broke things open for Atlanta in the first half is Bogna mcdonovich,

who got hot. I think he had like sixteen in the first half or something like that. That was a huge part of Atlanta getting going offensively. But what I want to focus on in this particular game because I don't think it has a huge impact on the series, Like the Celtics let go of the rope several times defensively in this game, had a handful of bad decisions

in the fourth quarter. But really this is just this is just kind of the natural ebb and flow of playoff basketball, especially when you're playing against a good team. And say what you want about this Hawks team, they're playing better basketball ever since Quinn Snyder came on board. And at home they're like twenty four and seventeen this year. So that's a tough place to win. You're up two zero in the series, you're still in control. I expect

the Celtics to win this series in five. But I did want to make a shout out to Trey Young because he struggled mightily in this series in the first two games, and I thought he was masterful in this particular game, particularly in the fourth quarter, and in just the really smart way that he was attacking and pick and roll so started the started things in the fourth quarter, getting downhill and making like a little floater over Al Horford,

and so the Celtics made a simple adjustment. They put Jason Tatum on on Yeka coong Wu and put Al Horford on DeAndre Hunter, so that when Trey Young calls on Yka Kongu up for the pick and roll, they could just switch it. And they do that. You know, the idea there is like when you call for a ball screen, you want a roll man who is capable of making a certain type of play, right, Like Trey Young loves to throw lobs in pick and roll, so he wants to call and Yeka into the screen so

that he has a lob threat. Right. Well, now when he does, it's just a switch and Tatum on Trey Young isn't exactly a great matchup for them. But Trey

made a really interesting adjustment himself. He just had both of them comes at his screen, so he'd have like ayekis at the first screen and then DeAndre Hunters at the second screen, and he kind of just methodically pulled over to the side and waited for Al Horford to step over too far, and then he hit DeAndre Hunter for the layup, and then you know, they started switching

with Al Horford as well. Towards the end of the quarter, and it was funny because Al Horford switches on to Trey Young, and Trey doesn't want to iso al Horford, so he sprints over and hands the ball to de Jontay Murray at the end of the clock and says, you go ISO. De Jontae ends up actually hitting like a little short step back jumper on the left wing.

But later in the game, with I believe just under two minutes left, he gets Horford on a switch again and there's not enough time on the shock clock for him to get it to de Jontay Murray, so he has to go try to make a play and he takes like this impossible step back three in the corner and sinks it. You could tell Trey was just feeling himself at that moment, which is kind of cool because after how bad he struggled in the first two games, it's cool to him have a real winning impact on

the series. That three was a massive shot. A couple possessions later, just under a minute left, I want to say it was like a three point game at this point or four point game at this point. Derek White's pressuring him in the backcourt and Trey, like most great point guards do, leverages that ball pressure to get Derek White on his backside and kind of pins him on his backside. He gets downhill and makes a floater that

ends up icing the game. Again. Like, we could talk all we want about Trey, and there's a lot of bad that comes with Trey, but at the end of the day, he's an outstanding passer and an outstanding high pick and roll decision maker that's got a great deal of offensive skill. He's still a guy who can help basketball teams. He just has some limitations that you have to account for, especially when you're considering him the best

player on a team that has real championship aspirations. Like I said, I still feel good about the Celtics and five though at this point. All right, moving on to Nuggets Wolves. This was an extremely impressive and dominant win from Denver. In my opinion, I am pretty high on this Timberwolves team, especially on the defensive end of the four. But you know, once again, and they keep running into

the same problem with Carl Towns. They have more freedom offensively, they have more driving lanes, and when he's at center with Rudy Gobert, they have a higher defensive ceiling obviously, although they have not defended better with Rudy in this particular series. But they have a higher defensive ceiling with Rudy Gobert, but he junks things up for them offensively. The big thing that stood out to me in this game was the Nuggets started with Jokic in especially in

the conley. The conley Gobart picking rolls, they'd have Jokic basically just do like a soft trap where he's ignoring Gobert and stepping out all the way to the three point line, just basically conceding that short roll pass to Gobert. And what really janked up the Timberwolves offense in this game is Gobert is incapable of doing anything out of

that short role position. There's a hilarious play in the first half of this game where he catches on the short roll with the head of steam going to the rim, and Jamal Murray is the guy who is from the low man position tagging over on the roller, and Gobert does like every other big in the entire league that you know, and Gobert just kind of like like takes a hard step towards Jamal Murray and then panics and then makes like a kickout pass to Nikhil Alexander Walker

on the perimeter right, and now the possession is dead on arrival, even though you drew a double team out at the perimeter, and you know he'd catched on the roll and try to do like a eurostep and fumble it out of bounds or or just find some way to blow it at the rim. Then there was a huge play at the end of the game. He finally draws a foul I think it was one of his

one five ninety eight. Finally manages to draw a foul on the short roll and then goes to the line and misses both free throws, and so at the end of the day, Like you know, I've always said, even even back when Gobert is with the Jazz, because Rudy's not the same defensive player now that he was in Utah. But in Utah, I thought a lot of the stuff

said about him defensively wasn't necessarily true. He was being looped in with all of this criticism surrounding what really was problems with the perimeter players defensively that Rudy was catching flak for that said all of the criticism of Rudy Gobert on the offensive end of the floor is real. I don't care what people say about how good of a screener he is. I don't care what people say

about how good of an offensive reboundary is. When you've got a player that, even with his physical advantages, cannot score or make make a play in a four on three when he is being completely unguarded, that is a problem. All these other guys we talk about that can't shoot, Draymond Green, that dude can make plays rolling down the floor in that short role position that you have to be able to at least do something coherent offensively even

if you can't score. And Rudy Gobert can't score and he can't pass out of that specific position, and that's what really janks things up for them on the Nuggets front. Jokich was this typical dominant self twenty points, eleven rebounds, twelve assists. I've always amazed by how easily he can dislodge Rudy Gobert from post position. I've talked about this before, but on the perimeter, you want to move your feet

as little as possible because it's about efficiency. Of movement in lateral space, like you don't want to take negative steps right in the post, like Jokic keeps his feet chopping all the time, and each time he does that allows him to reset his center of gravity and hit

Gobert again. And so a lot of times Gobert will absorb the first piece of contact, but then when he gets dislodged, Jokic has already reset himself and is hitting him again, and it's like that second or third bump that'll send Gobert way out of position and then he's getting the shot that he wants. I thought Michael Porter Junior did a really nice job attacking the rim early in this game. That kind of set a tone. Then he hit a huge three early in the fourth quarter

when the Wolves were going to run. They got it down to like five, and then the Wolves went into his own possession and he had a really nice relocation three to the right corner that he knocked down to put him back up eight. And then Christian Brown was the other guy I wanted to shout out. He made three really big athletic plays to start the fourth quarter. On a play where Gobert was guarding him and stepped up into help. He cut out of the baseline, jumped

into Gobert. Gobert blocked the shot, and he powered through him with his left hand and just kind of like feathered it into the back. Then he had another play running in transition where he made a left handed layup, and then a couple of plays later, he's on the left wing step first step with Anthony Edwards, one of the best athletes in the league, and he takes off and makes a really nice left handed finish over the top of Anthony Edwards during a Nuggets run. His athleticism

I thought was really impressive. This series is headed quickly towards a sweep, and I'll tell you right now. Like I said, I'm not gonna say anything until the end of the first round, but as of right now where we stand here on Saturday morning, I think Denver has been the most impressive team in the Western Conference so far, and if things stay this way through the end of the first round, I'm gonna be tempted to adjust my

pick of who's coming out of the Western Conference. Obviously, though, the Lakers and Warriors have plenty of time to get things together over the end of their series, and the Suns. It's just really hard to tell when they're playing a Clippers team without Kawhi and Paul George. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. Like I said, flying back to Tucson, so I will see you guys from the studio later tonight after Lakers Grizzlies. I appreciate you

guys rocking with us and supporting the show. See you later today. The volume