Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Timberwolves Series Prediction + Preview

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Void in Ontario, New customers only. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkang dot co. Slash audio. All right, welcome to Hoops tonight. You're at the volume heavy Wednesday, everybody of ball. If you guys are having

a great week. We are covering our next series today, the Los Angeles Lakers versus the Minnesota Timberwolves, same format that we've been doing the season series, off the top, the odds on DraftKings right now, what it looks like with the Lakers on offense, what it looks like with the Wolves on offense, the swing factors I see in the series, and then at the very end, the pick that I am making for who will win? You guys know the drill before we get started. It's subscribed to

the Hoops and OT YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore json LTCs. You guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about podcast feed where you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review. On that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where Jackson's

doing some great work this year. Make sure you guys follow us there, and the last but not least, keep dropping mailback questions in the YouTube comments so that we can get to them throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the season series went tow to two between these two teams. Once again,

not a lot of useful data there. Luca only played in one of those games, and the Wolves were missing basically their entire starting front court at the time, so not a whole lot to gather there as Ironically, when it came to film, I spent a lot of time watching the Western Conference Finals today, and a lot of footage of Luca attacking specific types of defenders and just how he looked against all those different types of defenders. The odds, again, all of our odds are provided by DraftKings.

The Lakers are a minus two hundred favorite. That line has moved a lot. It opened closer to like minus one sixty if I remember correctly. I think this is a little too big of a line. I think that the Lakers are a better team than the Wolves, and as I've mentioned, I'm going to pick the Lakers to beat the Wolves. I'll explain all the reasons why, but I kind of thought it made more sense as a gambling line closer down to one sixty. So there's some

value there on the Wolves the Lakers on offense. As far as matchups go, again, I went back this morning and I watched every single Luka Danchid shot attempt from the Western Conference Finals, and even though Luca is very comfortable against Jaden McDaniels, and he has a clear size and strength advantage there. Jaden did log a lot of good reps over the course of that series, and yeah,

there were good reps from Ant as well. There are some good reps from Kyle Anderson, who's no longer on the team, But I still think Jaden is probably your best bet. So my guess is that we're gonna see Jayden on Luca. We'll see Connley start on Austin Reeves. That's gonna be a huge part of this matchup is whether or not Austin can play Mike Conley off the floor. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but I do think we'll see a lot of Dante DiVincenzo, a

lot of Nikhil Alexander Walker in that two spot. I think we'll see Anthony Edwards on Rui. I thought he might spend some time on Lebron, and I'm not saying that he won't, but I think with the job that Ant's gonna have on offense in this game, it almost makes more sense for him to guard Rui and can be a little like Lackaday's agal off ball tracking shooters, which could be a little bit of an issue in that matchup, but it will save his legs considered versus

trying to battle Lebron all over the floor. That would mean Julius would guard Lebron, which we'll see how that would end up going. And then Rudy Gobert on Jackson Hayes to start. But again the Lakers will go small,

something we'll talk about right now. So the go Beart problem, I've seen a ton of people on Twitter talking about and debating the Lakers and their ability to play Rudy Gobert off the floor, and I've seen a lot of Timberwolves fans come back and play at point out the obvious fact that Rudy Gobert is a very good switch defender, and for the record, I agree with Wolves fans about that. To me, the go beart problem has nothing to do

about with hunting ISOs against Rudy Gobert. I think if the Lakers fall into that trap, it could actually backfire on them. Looking back at the Western Conference Finals, we didn't really see a lot of Luca attacking Gobert. We really only saw that in Game two. The Wolves mostly ran rock coverages with Gobert. In that series, they just went to the switching in crunch time of Game two, and yeah, Luca did score on Gobert once on a

step back three to win the game. But it's not a matchup that I think the Lakers should get obsessed with hunting. The advantages that Luca and Lebron have in this series are against the smalls, Luca attacking a skinnier Jaden McDaniels, attacking into Keile, Alexander Walker, attacking in Anthony Edwards attacking the smaller defenders that are on the floor. Lebron as well. If Lebron, especially if he gets into hunting Gobert, I don't think that's gonna go super well.

So like that is not the right focus point for me as far as how Gobert fits into this series. Where the Lakers can really hurt go Beart is in his off ball defense. And then on the other end of the floor. What I mean by off ball defense, So when you go to your five out spacing groups, so take Jackson Hayes out, put in a either a Dorianfinny Smith or a Gabe Vincent, You're gonna see a

lot of Dorian Finney Smith. That's the line. That's the Lakers' clear best five that you're going to see a ton of in the series, Austin Lebron, Luco, Dorian Phinney, Smith and Ruy Hachimura. All of those guys, if left open, are going to hit a high percentage of their threes.

So with that being the case, I'm more concerned about Gobert when Luca and Lebron are hunting Smalls, being put in a position where he has to either help at the rim where his rim protection value is very high, but he's going to have to concede wide open threes, or him having to track shooters on the perimeter off

the ball, which dramatically mitigates his defensive value. Either way, his rim protection is less valuable if it's conceding open threes, and him tracking shooters on the perimeter is way less valuable because the Lakers just won't even go that way. They'll look to score at the rim or in other spots on the floor. And so that's where I look at Gobart on defense being minimized by the Lakers five out lineups not hunting him and switches mitigating his rim protection.

And then on the other end of the floor, when Gobert is out there, You're going to see a ton of defensive game planning from JJ Reddick. When it comes to the dynamic of like playing guys off the floor, it actually, to me comes down to a little bit of Gobert and Conley. If Austin Reeves can score effectively against Mike Conley, that Chris Finch goes away from Mike Conley, Gobert's offensive value sinks considerably. Mike Conley is the only player on the Wolves over this era that's been able

to successfully weaponize Gobert as an offensive threat. They're timing in ball screens in the way they go Beart can free Conley up in screens, the timing of when Gobert slips out into his roles. Conley's just kind of chemistry with him over the years from when they played together on the Jazz that was the dynamic where they could

actually use Gobert as a successful role man. But if Austin can score successfully enough against Conley to get Conley off the floor to where it's more Nikhil, Alexander Walker or Dante DiVincenzo, those guys are much better defensive players, and obviously both of them are knocked down three point shooters, but those two guys don't have the playmaking talent that

Conley does. If you can play Conley off the floor and space Gobert away from the rim on the other end of the floor, then Gobert becomes basically an offensive rebounder and a screen setter, and a screen setter that can't score on the other side of the screen. And so that's where I could see the Gobert problem being an issue if they can play Conley off the floor and if instead of just hunting him and switches, they space him away from the rim in their five out groups.

Right where I could see Gobert being a benefit to the Wolves defense in this matchup is in the other lineups, like when Jordan goodwins on the floor, when Jared Vanderbilt's on the floor. Jackson as it's a little tricky because he's a vertical spacer, and as we saw in the Western Conference finals last year, Luca did a really nice job of kind of baiting Gobert into no man's land between Luca and the lie threat so that he could get those lobs as he was attacking downhill against his

matchup and running into Gobert. So it's less about Jackson, But when Vanda's on the floor, I think Gobert could be devastating. When Jordan Goodwin's on the floor, I think Gobert could be really devastating. And then just like all of the usual stuff that he does on offense, he's just got to be really impactful there. He's got a offensive rebound like crazy and set really good screens as best as he can. But that's gonna be the dynamic

in this series that's going to be really interesting. It's just how much can Mike Conley play and how effective can Rudy Gobert be In the context of the Lakers five out groups. Lebron attacking Smalls, I think Anthony Edwards on Lebron is going to be an interesting type of matchup because ant is so quick laterally and so big and strong and like a fire hydrant that I think he can actually force Lebron to shoot over the top.

But the other Smalls, Nikhil, Alexander Walker, Mike Conley, Dante DiVincenzo, Lebron's gonna have some opportunity to attack there. Lebron's been a good amount of time attacking nas Reid in switches, in their regular season matchup most recently, and Nas defended him really well there. In general, I don't really like Lebron attacking centers as much as I like him attacking smalls.

He did have a game recently, I think it was the Dallas game if I remember correctly, where he over and over again just started going at I think it was gafferd down the stretch and getting stuff at the rim. He's had some good reps there, but I don't think it would work particularly well against Nas Reed and Rigobert, So keeping an eye on where Lebron looks to attack the Timberwolves. Ball pressure I've used an important factor in

the series. If you guys remember in their last matchup, the one that Luca played in, the Lakers really controlled the early part of the game, but there was a second half run for Minnesota in there where they just picked up full court and wore down Austin, Lebron and Luca, and they lost control of the game for a little bit.

They did regain control in the fourth quarter, but there was a stretch there on the game chart where you saw that lead shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, and it was a lot of that ball pressure from the Timberwolves, forcing turnovers, getting out in transition. I'm a little worried for the Lakers about the Wolves overall athleticism and physicality, not so much their size. Everyone talks about like how

much bigger the Wolves are than the Lakers. I actually don't see them as much of a bigger team, because they're bigger at every other position, Like if you're looking at guard, like Austin's bigger than Mike Conley, Luca's bigger than Anthony Edwards. Ruy Hachimura is bigger than Jayden McDaniels. Lebron James is every bit as big, if not a little bit bigger than Julius Randall. It's really just the center position and when they play two bigs that they have a little bit of a size advantage in the

front court. But I don't look at it as a size advantage to me. It's more of just like an overall athleticism advantage than Minnesota has that can manifest with their ball pressure and with them making like really hard closeouts. That spooks some of the Laker role players if Ruy gets a little spooked, if you know Dorian Phinney Smith gets spooked, if some of these guys in their spot up situations just don't look comfortable because of the Minnesota closeouts.

That's where it could get a little tricky, and Minnesota could start getting away with devoting more attention towards Lebron and Lucas. So keep an eye on just the Laker role players and how comfortable they are in this particular matchup. So keys for the Lakers. When the Lakers are on offense, Luca, Lebron, Austin handling ball pressure, not turning the ball over, punishing smalls instead of hunting bigs, and switches again in one last note, Well, actually we'll get to that when we

get to the Wolves. And then three their role players just being confident and comfortable as the intensity picks up defensively from the Wolves. Keys for the Wolves, ball pressure like crazy, Gotta try to disrupt their offense, slow down their offense, force turnovers you can get out transition. And then secondly, I would switch with their fives again when they ran all that drop in the Western Conference finals.

It allowed Luca to constantly operate with a size advantage and to get those kind of baked in driving lanes that he gets from ball screens. I would switch with my fives with Nasried especially, but also with Gobert, because that is where you can bait Lebron and Luca into making the mistake of strictly hunting fives. We've seen that happen before. They did it against Al Horford and the Celtics game and at backfired. That is where you have

a game plan advantage. You can bait Lebron and Luca into some bad process by switching with your fives, moving to the wolves on the offensive side of the floor. JJ's defensive game plan in the regular season with Ant was similar to what he used against all the athletic guards that they faced. He would funnel them towards the sideline with a strong side zone, meaning the defender who's guarding the next closest player on the weakside is skipping all the way to the other side of the paint,

basically just waiting for Aunt. There were some downsides there because it had a baked in runway. As you open up your stants, Ant can really just drive and when he gets ahead of steam, it doesn't really matter if someone's in front of him. If it's not a rim protector like Ant struggles with rimp protect at the rim. He doesn't struggle with really anything else at the rim. So one of the things I think JJ will do is, after watching the game tape from that game, I think

he'll do a little bit more forward aggression. So with that strong side zone, I think he'll bring the defender further up, and I think he'll close the stance just a little bit more, try to make it for the on ball guy to try to make it so that ant just can't cleanly get a runway to take off. But in general, I think it's gonna be like literally a chess match type of game between JJ and Anthony Edwards. A lot of mixing up of coverages, that strong side zone.

I talked about, blitzes, high drops, gapping in ISOs, late double teams, after he puts the ball on the floor, I think we're gonna see a ton of that stuff geared towards targeting ants, inconsistent playmaking ANTS. Playmaking is arguably the biggest swing factor in this series. If he can take JJ's game plan and use it as a consistent method to get the Lakers in rotation, they can win this series. There as long as they get the ball out to an advantage and they incrementally break down the

Lakers defense with playmaking, they can win this series. It's just not a strong suit for this team. Aggregate playmaking falls off of a cliff when Mike Conley's off the floor. It is not a strength of this team. But if they can swing that factor in their favor, it could be the difference. Julius post mismatch hunting, I hope the Lakers start with Lebron on him instead of Ruy, but I don't think they're going to. I think they're gonna start Lebron on Jaden McDaniels. My guess is the matchups

look like this. I think we'll see Ruey on Julius. I think we'll see Austin on Ant. I think we'll see Luca on Conley. I think we'll see Lebron on Jaden McDaniels. And I think we'll see Jackson Hayes on Rudy Gobert. Now, when Dorian Phinney Smith comes in and they go to that core lineup, I think Dorian Phinney

Smith will go to Ant. I think Austin will move over to the off guard, whether that's Conley or Dante or Nikiel and then I think Luco will guard either Jaden or Rudy Gobert, but that's going to leave Ruey on Julie, and Julius has had his way with Ruy over the years. As a matter of fact, I can almost guarantee you that Julius Randall at some point in the time since Sunday has thought to himself, Ruy Hachamura cannot guard me. He has had a lot of success

in that matchup over the years. Ruy struggles specifically with holding his ground and understanding that he has a huge strength advantage. Ruy's a big, strong dude, and sometimes he just doesn't use that on defense. And I think Julius has a gift for like finding those weak points in a defender's defensive stance and just attacking it with power and dislodging the player and getting to his spots on

the floor. Julius is a better passer than Anthony Edwards, so I am curious to see how much doubling jj Reddick will do there. He may go an opposite route and go, let's see if Julius just plays hero ball on all series and see if that actually benefits us more than trying to send extra defenders there. I think that'll be interesting. Jaden McDaniels is going to be a huge swing factor in the series, obviously, his shooting ability,

his ability to knock down the open threes. He's been shooting much better post All Star Break, but the Lakers are going to concede some shots to him. His crashing and cutting. He can be a really devastating athlete going towards the rim that the Lakers are going to have to contend with. Nas Reed was actually a non factor in the Lakers game that Luca actually played in. Lebron guarded him and Lebron did an excellent job on him and basically removed him from the game. Lebron will likely

get that job again in this series at times. That'll be an interesting matchup to watch keys from Minnesota when they're on offense. A's playmaking, as we mentioned earlier, got to take advantage of the game plan as an opportunity to get the defense in rotation nas Reed, Julius Randall, and Dante DiVincenzo supporting scoring. This is a Lakers team that's been scoring a lot of points lately. They're gonna need guys that can score the basketball. Jady McDaniel's three

point shooting again. He shot well after the All Star break, but that's going to be something he's going to have to continue to do really, really well. And can Rudy Gobert do enough damage as a screener as an offensive rebounder to stay a net positive with some of his defensive value getting mitigated by the Lakers five out groups. That's going to be an important factor in the series

for the Lakers. Game plan discipline. When the Lakers let go of the rope a little bit on defense, they look super unathletic and the bottom can fall out for him. That's why they look so bad against bad teams after the Luca trade. That's why they're susceptible to some really long runs for the opponent as they let go of their defensive focus. Them staying focused on defense, to the game plan and doing their job on a possession by possession basis is vital to their ability to guard this team.

Aggressive coverages, pray on Minnesota's lack of playmaking talent forced them to beat you with the pass, and then lastly, the boxing out and gang rebounding against Gobar and Jaden McDaniels. There's going to be a lot of offensive rebounds that Gobar and Jaden are going to be going for. It's going to be about multiple efforts from multiple guys getting bodies him to box out, and then other dudes come and flying in against better athletes to try to meet

them up top. When you box them out on the ground, they can't jump. When they can't jump, that allows another player to beat them over the top to the rebound. It's going to be a team effort to survive on the glass. Swing factors in this series Jaden McDaniels defense on Luca. One of the biggest factors in the Western Conference Finals last year was the simple fact that Jaden

was too skinny to manage Luca. He did log some good reps, but overall in this series, Luca was very comfortable and it basically caused the base defensive scheme for Minnesota in their pick and roll coverage to crack and to not work. That's going to be important factor in the series is is Jaden gonna hold up better against Luca than he did last year? Ants playmaking. As we've mentioned multiple times in the show, I'm gonna say role

players shooting for both teams. Specifically, for the Wolves, it's gonna be off ball shooting from guys like Jaden McDaniels and guys like Julius Randall. But for the Lake it's more about good shooters who are proven shooters, but that might struggle a little bit under the intensity of the environment as the Wolves are so athletic. So I'm just gonna say role player shooting for both teams. Julius Randall is a player that has played very poorly in the

playoffs in his career. I think it's a little more complicated than that because of some of the injuries he's been dealing with or recovering from in some of those situations. But Julius Randalls play in this series. Him getting up to the player he was when he was an All NBA guy could be a huge factor for the Wolves. And then Lebron. This is a big physical defense that Minnesota has. Lebron killed the Wolves in their last regular season matchup. I think he had thirty three points and

seventeen rebounds. Lebron's ability to leverage himself to that extent is going to be a big factor in this series. If you look back at that at that point in time, that was before Lebron's groin injury, when he was playing like a literally like an MVP candidate every single night, really hasn't gotten to that level since the level since he came back from the injury. A lesser version of Lebron could obviously be a swing factor in Minnesota's favorite

A favor as we head into the series. My pick, I think this is a very favorable matchup for the Lakers. I think Minnesota's greatest defensive strength, which is the combination of perimeter defense, talent and rim protection, is neutralized by Luca because none of those perimeter defenders can really bother Luca.

And then on the other side of the floor, I think the strength of the Laker defense, which is game planning, loading up, and swarming, lines up with the weakness of the Wolves, which is their playmaking talent and just their overall decision making. So as I see on both ends of the floor, the strengths and weakness line up, this is going to be my first five game prediction. I think the Lakers are going to beat the Timberwolves in five games in this series, So we'll see what ends

up happening. Obviously a lot that can go either way, but this is a matchup that I think lines up really well for the Lakers. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We'll be back with our two seven matchups tomorrow. I will see you guys there. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate

you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. They would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it. The volume