Hoops Tonight - LIVE: Anthony Edwards powers Timberwolves to BLOWOUT of SGA & OKC Thunder

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welcome to hoops tonight. You're at the volume heavy Saturday. Everybody hopefull You guys are having a great start to your weekend.

of different levels. Some stuff that's like classic game three down two Oh buzz sauce stuff, but also some realities in terms of the ability of this Minnesota team to make Oklahoma City uncomfortable at stretches, some growth from Minnesota shot creators, as they had by far their most successful sustained offense in this particular game. So much interesting stuff to get into tonight. You guys know the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel

so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore json lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about a podcast for you wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating in a review on that front. Check out our Solos media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. We're releasing content throughout the year and then keep dropping questions in the chat so that we can hit him in our mail bags

towards the towards the end of these shows. Now tonight's show in particular, Jackson's out of town. So if you guys want to get questions, we're gonna be taking chat questions from my Twitter feeds. If you go to my Twitter feed at underscore json LT and you scroll down, you'll see a tweet where I asked for questions. Feel free to drop the questions in there, and when I get done with the breakdown, we'll head into that that

kind of thread there and I'll start grabbing questions from there. Also, when we finish tonight, we're gonna be moving over to playback again. That's playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight there for you know, another hour or so, we're gonna be taking callers. We'll watch some film. It's more informal. It's a lot of fun. We just talk hoops and have fun for an extra hour at the tail end of the show. So make sure you guys head over there.

All right, let's talk some basketball. So at in the playback session last night, we have a thunder fan th Under a fan named Will who is graced us with his presence several times, some fun venting and some takes on his Thunder team, and I asked Will, I said, what is Shay's biggest weakness? And I was trying to make a point with respect to his u with the

game plan, and Will mention three point shooting. What I was trying to say was his playmaking, specifically that if you packed the pain against him, he's a passer that can make reads and is a you know, certainly good enough at the job to still be a top tier superstar in this league. But no one's going to call out Shay's playmaking as the strength of his game. And similarly to what Will was saying, no one's going to call out Will the SGA's three point shooting as the

strength of his game. The two things there in his game that you would point to as like not like the like far down the list of what he's great at is his three point shooting and his processing in the half court. What would you consider to be his strengths. Well, he's the best high volume ISO player in the league by a mile. Among any player who ran at least

three hundred ISOs this year. Shot out of three hundred ISOs, he was far and away the most efficient, and he's far and away the best driver of the basketball in the league. You have like two hundred more drives than anyone else in the NBA this year, which you know, you can do the math there on how many times

that is per game. And so what I didn't like about the game plan that Chris Finch used in the first two games was he was picking up Shay really far away from the basket with Jada McDaniels, often right when he was crossing half court, and he was staying glued to shooters off the ball. And one of the things that did is it allowed Shay to one not have to rely on his three point shot because he's

beating ball pressure by driving. And so you're playing into the strength of his game by giving him a much wider runway, a longer runway to drive past his man. And then two, he doesn't have to rely on that three point shot because he's not being you know, baited into it by a guy playing off of him. And then the third piece of it is if you stay home off the ball and you let Shape play a lot of one on one or a lot of two

on two, you're accentuating his shot, making his foul. Drifting is scoring ability, which is the kind of thing that made him the MVP of this league, instead of forcing him to process tight space environments in the middle of the floor and show off his passing ability, which again he's fine at, but it's not his strength. And so I you know, again, I was immediately annoyed about this in game one Game two. It was defensible to run it back just because Minnesota shot.

Oklahoma City team uncomfortable. I pulled the numbers yesterday. I can't remember exactly off top of my head, but they had an offensive rating around like one thirteen, I believe, against Denver, and in the first two games in an offensive rating of one to twenty against Minnesota. Minnesota is a substantially more talented defensive roster bigger, longer athletes that are faster, deeper.

stopping this team. In theory, they should be able to do a better job of what Denver did. The same game plan but with better personnel should in theory lead to dramatic results. And we saw that tonight immediately right out the gates the specific ball pressure adjustment, Jaden was

not meeting Shae outside the three point line. He was meeting him inside the three point line, not allowing him to get that head of steam against the ball pressure, but then against everybody else, And I thought this was the genius little tweak from Chris Finch against everyone else

he was pressuring. Cause again, those guys aren't the dribble drive threat that shake Gilders Alexander is and so what ended up happening is you were able to neutralize that initial problem, which was Shay he goes four for thirteen tonight has four turnovers. He was one for four from three with four turnovers in the first half. So again you accentuated his processing in his three point shooting. You could knock down threes and he didn't make the ree.

Simple example, there was like a play where they pinched in off the ball, because that's the other part of it. It's not just the ball pressure piece. They were sinking in. You could see when Jaden is facing up against Shae. You know, he's standing at the top of the key and Shae's outside the three point line. There's a little bit of a gap. You were seeing guys digging down

into the driving lanes. They were bringing doubles, not out at half court, but bringing the doubles inside the three point line, and in that zone they were able to force Shade a pass. There was a play in the third quarter where they brought a double team of Shae

inside the three point line around the elbow. Isaiah Joe is wide open in the left corner and Shae just throws a bad pass to Isaiah Joe And it's like, if he throws a good pass on time, on target, that's a three point shot that's probably going to go in. But again, you're forcing Shay to do the thing that he's not as good at as the other things that

he's great at. And I just thought that worked. But then the second piece of it is pressuring the hell out of everyone else, which allows Minnesota to maintain their identity.

the gates. You know, I understand that thought process, but again, ultimately, when you get into a series like this against a team that's better. Oklahoma City demonstrated themselves to be better. They won nineteen more games than Minnesota this year, and so the margins are thin, and you need to play into what gives you the best chance to win this specific series. Very similarly like I talk about it with coaching in the big picture, you don't want to coach

for the roster. You want you coach for the roster you had. So if you're not fast, don't play a style of basketball that requires you to be fast and run. Play a slower, methodical, matchup, attacking type of attack. If you've got a really fast team with a bunch of fast guards and you're not pushing the ball in transition, you're not accentuating what your roster is good at. But even in a very focused level in the postseason, within one of these two week series, you got to coach

for this matchup. I don't care what your identity is. Shaye torched you all season in that identity, and so one of the things that I liked about that specific tweak from Finch was by sagging off of Shay, but by pressing up on everyone else, they were able to when they had the ball, meaning well, obviously when Shaye

had the ball, those guys were sinking in. But by pressuring up on everyone else when they had the ball, they were able to maintain some of that aggressive ball pressure identity that made Minnesota the basketball team that they've been over the course of the last two years. And ironically, they were able to actually fulfill, you know, something or force something out of Oklahoma City that we very rarely see,

which is them turning the basketball over. In that first half, they turned OKAC over a bunch and got out in transition a bunch.

game right two. The ball pressure on the other Thunder players, forcing turnovers and getting out in transition. Those are the two things that we've already discussed. The third thing, Ant and Julius making the corner kicks. We've talked about this NonStop through the first two games of the series. Minnesota, for the first time tonight showed the ability to dislodge Oklahoma City from their base defensive scheme the first time. Thirty four in the first quarter, thirty eight in the

second quarter, thirty five in the third quarter. That's absurd. They were finally able to demonstrate, hey, your baseline scheme doesn't work. In the first two games, they were unable to do that. Aunt and Julius forcing the issue, taking bad shots, not making the corner kicks. When the corner kicks were made, not knocking them down. In the first two games of the series, the Wolves were nine for thirty six on corner threes. That's twenty five percent. That's

not going to get the job done. The turnovers that they were dealing with, all of those things that they had to do to successfully process against this defense wasn't getting done. Tonight as of five minutes left in the fourth quarter, only nine turnovers. Relentlessly in this game, and and Julius making the corner kickout passes over and over again, trusting their ability to capitalize on that advantage. And it

wasn't just corner threes. I thought Jaden McDaniels in particular did an incredible job tonight operating on that weak side corner as a guy who was hitting threes, but also making like attacking closeouts, making connective passing reads. There were a couple of plays in the late first half that I thought perfectly demonstrated. This one a corner kick from Julius. Another corner kick from Ann I have in both of my Twitter feed you can find him at underscore jsnlt.

I put him in a little thread. But Julius drives. He he draws Shay in and help because again all series long, Oklahoma City has been packing the paint and conceding those corner kickouts. Julius makes the corner kickout. There's a close out. That close out is an advantage, right, got to capitalize on that advantage. Jayden racks to the baseline and on that rip the remove because he beats the close out, He's able to generate dribble penetration and

it forces the big man to step up. Then Rudy Gobert very smartly teas up, meaning he just kind of relocates from the opposite dunker spot right in front of the rim and makes himself available. Jaden drops it off to him, Rudy catches. Then lou Dort has to because he has no choice digging, and also it's just kind of part of the way the Thunder play basketball. Swoop in to try to steal it from Gobert, and as a result, Nikil Alexander Walker is wide open at the

top of the key. Rudy another connective past pitches it to Nikil at the top of the key. Pump fakes on the close out, gets in the lane and gets an easy, breezy floater in the lane where Oklahoma City typically is swarming, but not attacking at the beginning of the possession, but kicking on the beginning of the possession, moving the ball, and suddenly things get loose. Suddenly there's an opportunity in the middle of the floor where you can look to be aggressive without having to deal with

the swarm of Oklahoma City defenders very similar one. Aunt drives kicks to the corner to Jaden, draws an extra rotation from the top of the wing, pitches it to Nas read another really aggressive closeout. Nas just shows the ball, Dude goes flying by, puts the ball on the floor, and then Easy Breezy settles into a wide open three on the right wing that he knocks down. That's advantage basketball. That's how you have to break down this Oklahoma City defense.

Get into the middle, make the corner kicks, knock them down when you're wide open, drive closeouts, make the connective reads. Then you're gonna see opportunities for Aunt and Julius to be aggressive on the backside. But again, there's more to it than just that. Even the Aunt and Julius over the top shot making like Aunt and Julius just did a better job of being a little more selective on the types of pull up jump shots they were taking. I thought Ant took some really tough ones in the

second half, but he got his rhythm first. He got it going with some easier looks against drop coverage or beating gambles, and so when he got his jumper going, then in the second half, he went to some really tough bits of shot making, but it came in the flow after he already built his rhythm. Julius Randalls over the top shot making in the short range and a pull up three as well. Like you saw the shot making from the stars meet the moment as well, guys

knocking down their catch and shoot threes. As of the time we started the show, there were seven Timberwolves players that hit multiple threes and going there. Naseri two for three, Dante DiVincenzo two for two, Ni Kil, Alexander Walker two for four, Ant five for eight, Mike Conley two for six, Jada McDaniel's two for four, Julius Randall two for five. So all those dudes multiple threes, all of them hit over forty percent except for Mike Conley.

remember correctly, but it's in the first half. I thought he read the room right and was like, oh, we're forcing turnovers, we're getting out in transition. This is very much like a up and down the floor type of game. How about we throw Terrence Shannon in there. And Terrence Shannon, you know, in a league where it's hard to stand out as an athlete, this guy pops off the screen

every time I watch him as an athlete. And he got some opportunities to attack, to slash off the wing, to slash in transition, and I thought he was great in his shift. I thought, there's just a really smart move from Chris Finch in that spot. So obviously everything goes Minnesota's way in this game and they get a big win. The question is can Minnesota still win this series? The problem is is you spotted Oklahoma City a two

to oh lead with a foolish game plan. Now, again, as I mentioned before, there's no guarantee that you would have had an opportunity to win either of those games, which you probably have a better chance to win those games if you end up you starting the series with an appropriate game plan. The problem is now you still even after tonight, you have to win three of the next four games, and at least one of those games

needs to be one in Oklahoma City, maybe two. If OKAC manages to steal one game in your building, Oklahoma City will come out and play better in game two. There are obvious things that will swing and excuse me in game four, apologize game two minute soda. Oklahoma City will play better in game four, there's a couple of

obvious things that will tilt back their way. They're gonna come out with a more desperate defensive effort with a ton of physicality, like that's just guaranteed right out the gates, which means Aunt and Julius are gonna have to be even more deliberate with protecting the ball, with making the appropriate reads. Guys are gonna have to hit threes against

tighter closeouts. Guys when they drive closeouts are gonna have to deal with sharper closeouts containing the ball that they're gonna have to do a better job beating and making those subsequent reads out of it. Right, Oklahoma City turned the ball over a lot at the beginning of this game. I would expect Oklahoma City to turn the ball over less in Game four. Right, They're gonna be more methodical, like they have seen this style of defense before. They

saw it in the Denver series. So we're gonna see them most likely try to bring back some of that methodical playmaking and shot making that we saw in the Denver series at stretches right, So like Oklahoma City, you will play way better in Game four and this margin will be way tighter. Now, the case if you're a Minnesota fan and you're looking for a reason to feel optimistic about your chances to come back and win the series, the case is that you did some real damage tonight.

This was not a win. This was an ass kicking. I thought you shook the thunder to their core tonight. You had them looking disheveled and doing things they don't normally do. Shae was awful. You played them into a bunch of turnovers. Look at how many times this year Shae was four for thirteen tonight. Go look at how many times this year Shaye shot that poorly from the field. That's thirty one percent. I pulled the numbers for the

show the other day. He had single digit games this year below forty percent from the field, guys like Jalen Brunson, guys like Anthony Edwards, they had more than twenty such games. You played Shay into an uncharacteristically tough game. You played a team that doesn't turn the bast over into a bunch of turnovers. You took a sixty eight win team that I said the last night, I would be shocked if they didn't win the title at this point, and you beat the shit out of them. So if you're

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

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

of four, and it's just really hard to do. It's really hard to sustain. And so with that being the case, like I still feel like the thunder are in a commanding position here, but you just got to take it one game at a time. We talked about this last night. You win for New York, it's the same kind of thing. Just win game three, it changes the series. Win game three, all of a sudden, Game four becomes the pivot point.

If you win game four, you go back to Oklahoma City in a two to two series with the appropriate game plan, and you feel like you have a better chance to win the series at that point. Theoretically, at that point, you're in better shape than you are in game one zero zero, because now you know the way that you want to play and you only got to beat them twice. Same thing goes with the Knicks win game three, all of a sudden, Game four becomes the

pivot point. You win game four, it's two to two, you're going home for a best of three, and you've figured out some stuff with the way you want to play. You just have to keep taking it one game at a time. All right, bear with me for just a second because Jackson's gone, So I'm gonna pull up the tweet here so I can get these questions from you guys. All Right, I know it's the playoffs and adjustments that matter.

But do you think that Finch not adjusting the base defensive scheme in the first two games is him just not wanting to overreact and having confidence in his player's ability to execute. Absolutely, That's what we talked about earlier. There's there's a kind of push and pull that you see in every single like weird matchup that kind of leads to a blink like kind of a staring contest between the coaches. For instance, like let's say a fast

team and a slow team play against each other. Imagine like a lightning fast Golden State Warriors team with like Draymond Green at center in like twenty twenty two and then like, imagine a two big group, so call it, you know, this year's Minnesota Timberwolves versus the twenty twenty two Warriors or another two big team like Houston or

something like that. With those situations, it's like who's gonna blink? Like, are is the small team gonna be like, shit, we can't out small these guys, Let's go big, Or is the big team gonna go like, shit, we're too slow for these guys, Let's go small like and it's like who's gonna be the first team that blinks? And I think there's a certain amount of like I think Chris Finch wanted to go out there with his base scheme and just be like, let's see if the thunder can

beat the Timberwolves. The problem is is like they beat you pretty good in game one, and they cut you a pieces in that game, and it was pretty clear right away in game two that they could score whenever they wanted to. Again, so they're like, there was no real point in game two where Minnesota took substantial control, and so they did, for the record, to Finch his credit, like they did the game was just already out of reach.

They did start doing this like kind of meet and Shae further back and packing the paint thing on, like some of the final possessions in the fourth quarter of Game two.

So I'm generally of the belief that you should attack right away with the method that gives you the best chance to win that series, and make adjustments quicker rather than slower. We're talking about this with Jackson yesterday, just with I think it was Jake Iszenberg yesterday, like be quick to don't be stubborn, be quick to make the appropriate adjustment to give you the best chance to win a playoff series.

They were playing great basketball. In general, the best way to prefer, like you know that old expression, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. Similarly like your best chance to play your best basketball when you need to is to practice playing your best basketball. Like as a Laker fan, for instance, I didn't think the Laker defense was anywhere near as good as it was before

Lebron heard his groin. When Lebron heard his groin. He was out for a while, the defense fell off a cliff when Lebron came back. There was never really a point from that point to the end of the season where they looked like the same defense that they were before the injuries. So yeah, I'm not surprised that they went into the Minnesota Series and they were playing some shitty defense. I think there's a certain amount of like in general preparing for playoff basketball as it pertains specifically

to Oklahoma City in Indiana. These are two teams that play a very hectic style with full court ball pressure and a ton of rotation speed and flying up and down the floor and transition on offense. These are teams that need to be deep and need to be in great shape. It's just something that's necessary for their specific play style. Alrighty is Pascal the underrated X factor in the Eastern Conference Finals that I think he is? The

Knicks don't seem to have an answer for him. Going back to what we had last year in the postseason. If you guys remember when Og and Deobi got hurt, Pascal caught Josh Hart for a lot of like this primary assignment stuff, and he was just cooking his ass

all over the place. But like in general, Siakam is the missing piece to the Indiana Pacer offense from what it already was before the trade last year, which was that one of the best pick and role players in the league, a guy that is going to consistently set teams up with their team up with an advantage and they could play advantage basketball with the best of them.

But what a guy like Siakam gives you is the ability to create his own advantage one on one, and you know it's gonna be different levels of value in different games based on the way the flow is. Ideally, I'm sure the Pacers would like to never have to use Pascal as an ISO player and have him attacking with an advantage consistently.

What is sustainable for the going into Game four? For the talked a little bit about this early earlier, but like again, I think the Thunder will absolutely bring a better defensive effort right away, Like you're probably not going to score seventy two points in the first half, right and they certainly will take better care of the basketball. I can't remember exactly what the numbers were because they've been adopted adapted to the full game. I guess I

can give you the full game numbers real quick. They gave up sixteen points off of turnovers in this game, but I think thirteen or fifteen of them, like most of those came in the first half, and by the way, Oklahoma City cleaned that up literally in the second half of this game. So I think they will take care better care of the ball.

into the next game the right game plan. So again, just sagging off of Shay packing the paint, ball, pressuring the other guys when they have the ball, and then on offense, Julius and Aunt making the corner kicks whenever they can, and then playing advantage basketball out of that whenever they have an opportunity to that. They found a formula now that has shown the ability to work. Tea Wolves fan, but do you think fatigue played a factor?

If so, it's going to be a long series. No, that everybody in Oklahoma City, Jersey is who plays in their rotation is twenty six or younger except for Alex Crusoe. So any of you guys who still play basketball at my age in your mid thirties will be able to tell you how it feels a lot different when you're twenty five twenty four, when you've got to play every other night.

naturally as part of urgency. Like this same Thunder team kind of got smacked by Memphis and would have lost Game three if John Moran didn't get hurt, and so like, there is a certain natural tendency to see that kind of pullback in these sorts of situations. How much defensively would the Wolves actually lose if they replaced Rudy with a mid level guy who can actually shoot. I generally am of the belief, and I thought Rudy was better tonight.

Just was more active on the defensive glass and had a couple of sequences where he had better success against Shaye than he did in earlier parts of the series.

But the thing with Rudy is his value as a rimp protector is actually less in a scheme where you've got so many quality perimeter defenders relative to what his value looked like in Utah, for example, where you know he was cleaning up messes constantly because there were you know, Donovan Mitchell couldn't guard, Joe Ingles couldn't guard, you know, Mike Conley couldn't guard you know, Jordan Clarson couldn't guard. They just had a bunch of dudes who couldn't slide

their feet. It was like Royce O'Neill was the only guy who could like really guard, you know, for that team. And so you know, in this particular type of scheme, Like, I think there's a reason why Minnesota's consistently all year looked fantastic when it's Nas reading Dante DiVincenzo. It's because it's just a bunch of elite perimeter defenders and the ability to space the floor with NAS's shooting ability. All right, what suggestion do you have for changing the knicks starting

and closing lineups? What do you think of changing out Heart for Deuce in the starting lineup just to keep up with the Pacers during that time, then win the minutes with Mitch closing with Mitch og Deuce, McHale and Brunson. So this is the thing. Mitchell Robinson to me, is very much a player that relies on exerting energy. And by the way, if you pull up his numbers from last night, in the second half, he had I think one offensive rebound, I think he had one block, and

I think he was minus seven in his minutes. He was dominant in his first half stretch. The thing with Mitch is, I think you want to keep his minutes in that like eighteen to twenty two range because that's where he is most effective with his motor. You want him playing, you know, basically two shifts a game, right, you know, bridging the first and second quarters and bridging the third and fourth quarters. Like, that's what you want.

And again there's a conversation to be had about the big picture in terms of whether or not you should try to find a player that can kind of approximate what Mitch Mitch does, but is capable of playing thirty thirty five minutes a night. But with this, within this scale of this, within the scope of this particular postseason series.

You know, Mitch played what twenty nine minutes I think in game in game two, like and in those final minutes, you know, in his twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty ninth minute, that was when he was like leaving Siakam and leaving Turner open and making a couple of sketchy decisions defensively and like helping recover situations. So like, I think, if you're going to try to close with min which by the way, opens up some other problems

in terms of spacing. But if you close with Mitch, you want to make sure that he's closing within the scope of a minute load that he can handle. And so it's one thing to say, let's put Deuce in the starting lineup. I think Deuce can handle heavy minutes. And the reality is Josh Hart is just not doing

enough damage offensively out there in his minutes. But with Mitch in particular, I don't think you want to be necessarily closing with him unless you can keep his minutes down, and so he might just have to get kind of creative with the rotation in order to make that happen. All right, let me double check really quick to make sure I didn't miss any. Are there any defensive adjustments you think the Knicks can make versus Indy or are they just going to have to try to beat them

in shootouts. I'm gonna be honest with you guys, Like, if you watch the film from the first two games of this series, Kat is like utterly lost on the defensive end of the four. It looks like he has

no idea what he wants to do. He's like I saw some clips, some defensive clips from game two where like he threw some of the worst high drop kind of hedge blitz whatever you want to call him, type of looks i've ever seen where he's coming out way too high and then in rotation he's just kind of running around like a chicken with his head cut off, and then like the ball go in the basket or a cutter will catch it open, he kind of just looks around like like what do you guys want me

to do? And and it just he just looks lost out there. And so I you know, if you asked me what was the best possible game plan to try to proceed with moving forward, to me, it would be with Cat. It would just be switching everything to prevent the obvious drop coverage looks that you can get and then just communicate like crazy behind Cat to make sure that he doesn't get lost. But it's when he's in these two on the ball situations and he has to

rotate that he's getting lost. And so I would just, you know, try as hard as you can to turn Indiana into an ISO team, and the best way to do that is by switching. But there are some realities to the fact that you know, I saw someone say, I saw a Celtics fans say, or as a Pacers fan say on Twitter, like this is going to be very different than keeping Tatum in front. And I was like when I read that, I was like, I was trying to tell you guys this, like it's a very

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

much pace and verve in the half court. They'll make you execute fifteen to twenty switches before the end of the possession, and inevitably you're gonna fuck one of them up. And when you do, now they don't have to play ice of ball. They can play drive and pick out of that. And so again, like it's it's just it's a really tough matchup with Cat out there, and you

can't just like bench Cat. You don't have the depth for that, and so, like, you know, honestly, like all all you can hope for is that they just play better, that they do a better job within their scheme. By the way, like I I think the Knicks have a decent chance to win tomorrow night. Like I'm I'm not gonna sit here and be surprised if if the Knicks

win tomorrow night. Now, like I feel almost certain that Indiana's gonna get one of those two games, which means they're gonna be up three to one, which means they're gonna probably go to the finals. But like there's this series isn't over. You just got to take it one

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

TV slash Hoops tonight. We'll hang out there for about forty five minutes or so. We'd be taking callers and watching some film. Again is always sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We will see you guys next time. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight. 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 really appreciate it.