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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. Oh, all of you guys are having a great week. Got a jam pack show for you guys tonight. The Minnesota Timberwolves ended the Golden State Warrior season. We're going to talk mostly about the future for both teams.
Are going to talk about what it looks like from Minnesota looking forward in a couple of their matchups, and then we'll talk a little bit about Golden State. I want to talk about Jimmy Butler, who struggled to score the ball when his team needed to in this series, and talk a little bit about what they're looking for down the line in terms of free agency and in the trademarket this summer. After that, we have our course correction segment with Microsoft. We're gonna be talking a little
bit about Jason Tatum. And then at the tail end of the show, the Boston Celtics, in a must win game at home, deliver a championship level punch against the New York Knicks to extend that series to a Game six. We're going to talk about some of the specific things they did really well, and then we're also going to talk about the reality of what Game six is, which is going to be a knockdown, drag out fight and should be a very entertaining basketball game to end our
second round. You guys know the Joe before we get started, subscribe to Hoops Tonight YouTube channels so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS you guys, don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast on our Hoops tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave your rating in a review on that front, Jackson's making great content for our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there and then last one at lease keep dropping mailback questions and those YouTube comments. We can keep hitting them throughout the remainder of the postseason. No playback tonight. We usually go for an after show where we take callers and do that sort of thing, but we're taking tonight off on that front. But we will be back on playback for an after show tomorrow night after the final buzzer of
Game six between the Thunder and the Nuggets. So make sure you go to playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight to get set up there so you can come hang out in the playback. I've been having a ton of fun with those Jackson's been hanging out to and we've been taking questions and having callers and watching film and it's informal and we talk shit, we have fun, we have fans come up and vent, and it just I've really enjoyed it as kind of a change of pace
in this postseason. So make sure you guys get set up on playback so he can return to the after show tomorrow night after thunder Nuggets. All right, let's talk some basketball. So not going to focus too much on tonight's game. We've talked that specific matchup to death over the last week and I'd rather just focus moving forward. I mean, the Warriors just didn't have the horses to
compete in this series without Steph Curry. I do think this series worked wonders for Minnesota's ball movement on offense. Tonight they locked thirty six assists on forty nine made baskets, and the ball was just moving around and it's happening everywhere. Anthony Edwards as well, making really impressive reads in the
middle of the floor. He's the gap in his penetration speed in the early part of the series, and how rushed he was going downhill compared to how he was just slowing down right in that middle portion of the paint towards the tail end of this series, and just letting the defense react to him and taking the easy
reads that were available hit to him. There. I thought the drop off pass he had to Jada McDaniels and the dunk out of the dunker spot was a classic example of that, just waiting for the defense to react rather than just flying like a bull in a china shop towards the basket. And those ball movement sequences are going to be specifically relevant for a relevant excuse me, for a potential series against Oklahoma City or Denver. So looking forward for Minnesota, they obviously match up really well
against Denver. They have won eight of their last eleven matchups with them, dating back to the beginning of the Western Conference semi finals last year. They have the size and physicality to match up with Denver at every position. Denver is a group that is big at a lot of positions, Like Jamal Murray's a big, strong guard, so is Christian Brown. Michael Porter Junior is having a rough playoff run, but he's big and tall, you know. Aaron
Gordon Russell Westbrook brings athleticism, Peyton Watson brings athleticism. Minnesota can match that, and they've shown the ability to bother both Jokic and Murray, and we also saw them just like absolutely dominate Michael Porter junior, and that dude is already running on fumes and he had a rough series against Minnesota last year, so that had something to keep an eye on. But Denver's success in that series came on the defensive side of the ball when they made
their runs. When Denver won Game three, four, and five. In those three games, they held Minnesota to a one ZHO six offensive rating. They really worked on bringing Jokic further out to the level and just making it so that Ant couldn't turn the corner and ball screens get momentum. Ironically, Christian Brown was the best defender that Denver had for Ant in that series. And obviously, you know KCP was
just too small for Aunt. Kcp's not in the picture anymore, so you'll see a lot of Christian Brown on it. They tested Minnesota's ability to pass through their defense, and so that growth that we've seen in this postseason run I think will be imperative in that matchup. That said, I believe Oklahoma City is going to win. I just wanted to talk through the Denver piece because I think
that's a legitimate possible outcome. I'd go I'm leaning like seventy five to twenty five towards Oklahoma City at this point in the series, and Oklahoma City will present some similar issues to Minnesota that we saw. Golden State present a steady diet of quality defenders at every position group, a lot of loading up on the strong side and rotating with speed to account for that, you know, kind of over emphasis on the strong side of the floor.
And they have real rim protection, and that's the difference. Raymond Green is a good rim protector, but mostly just with his IQ and his physicality, this is a team that's going to present real size and length at the rim in a way that if we look back last year, the one bad playoff series that Ain't had was against Dallas, a team that could match his athleticism on the perimeter
and the team that could provide real length at the basket. Now, one of the things that we saw specifically with Dallas, if you guys remember correctly, he was Derek Jones junior, and Derek Jones has a great deal of length on the ball, and he was able to actually bother ants like pull up jump shooting in a way that I think, you know, shorter defenders like door to case on Wallace
might struggle a little bit. And that's why I think it'll be interesting to see if we get to a point in the series where they go with more of like a J. Dub on Ant just to try to match his length a little bit more. But it's gonna be a real challenge, and the challenge will be for Ant to not repeatedly test Hartenstein and Chad at the rim, but rather to make the good reads when he's there, and so those slow down drives that we saw are
gonna be key. I think the mid range could play a key role in this series for both Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall to get short range, high percentage shots before getting all the way to the rim, because whenever Rudy Gobert is on the floor, you're gonna see chat Holmer and sitting his ass right underneath the basket protecting the rim there with his length. And I do think that both Randall and Edwards can get some quality mid range looks over Oklahoma City's smaller guards. But I'm just
super excited for that potential series. I mean, two elite defenses that are very different. Obviously, Minnesota is bigger, Oklahoma City is faster. Two elite on ball guards and Shae and Ant. That what an incredible duel that could end up being. And I would argue in that matchup, like if Ant or Shay badly outplayed the other in terms of just over the top shot making and probing in against these defenses, I think that could swing the winner.
I think that's a I think that's a series where the gap between Ant and Shay could be the difference if both guys played it more or less the same level. I think it probably tilts towards Oklahoma City. But if Ant can outplay Shay, that's a series that they can absolutely win. There's interesting co stars JDub and Chet. Obviously, Chet you know a skinny, defensive minded rim protector that's got some ability offensively. J dub is you know another
on ball guard. But then from Minnesota, it's these big forwards, right, It's Julius Randall, it's nasrit guys that have we've seen show the ability to score against size mismatches, and they're gonna have plenty of size mismatches that they could attack. And I just think this could be an all Timer series a great showcase for the next generation of NBA talent to see all of these guys on the same floor.
You know, if you had to tell me coming into this postseason run, like Okay Lebron and Steph and KD and Kawhi and Jimmy Butler and all of like the establishment stars that we've seen over the last several years, even like Tatum for instance, and all of these guys, if you were to tell me Giannis as well, if you were to tell me those guys weren't going to be in the postseason when we get to the final
two rounds. If I at least got to see something like this, to see Shay versus, to see Shay versus Ant, I think that's a really fun matchup. And even extending to the potential Knicks Pacers matchup, which we'll talk about a minix that's not set in stone. I think it's a good showcase for the league and what the next era could look like. But we will get further into that matchup once we have more concrete information about who's going to play. Which will you know, we could have
an answer tomorrow night. We could be in a situation where we don't know until games set, but when we know, we will do a full series preview that breaks that series down from the perspective of both teams on both ends of the floor. On the Golden State front, I was generally impressed with the way they battled in this series without Steph, Like they routinely kept things close until it was you know, in that mid second half stretch
where Minnesota consistently pulled away. But like, if you guys think of it, they just if you look at Minnesota's defensive firepower, I mean, this was a team that strangled the life out of Luka Doncic Laighton games. This is a team that strangled the life out of Lebron James Lighton games. This was a team that completely and utterly
shut down Austin Reeves. And yeah, obviously they didn't have the ball and player movement that Golden State had, but the Warriors just didn't have the offensive firepower to keep up. And I do want to take a minute to talk about Jimmy Butler scoring. I don't want to hyper focus on it because I think there's some realities in terms of the fit alongside Steph Curry that accentuates more of
his versatility. But Jimmy Butler in his career has thirty eight games in the postseason where he scored at least twenty five points. And under the circumstances with the way that this series was going, they specifically needed scoring from him. That was like the thing he could do to lift the floor of this team and keep them in these games. And he had one game in the entire series where he scored more than twenty points one time, and that
just wasn't enough. And I thought he failed to really emphasize that part of his game, to push that part of his game when his team needed him to. And you know, it could have been the difference between this series ending in five, where Steph potentially getting an opportunity
to return in game six. You needed to win one game, and like I just the shot the shot totals, I mean, when he takes twenty shots total in the last two games like that, there's a certain amount of he needed to just empty the clip, so to speak, because that's what the matchup called for. It's like otherwise you're asking Brandon Pajemski and Buddy Healed and Jonathan Kaminga carry the load offensively and there's obviously going to be a great deal of up and down that comes with those types
of role players. All of that said, I do think that Jimmy Butler trade was a success. Overall. I think they would have won this series or at least given themselves a very good chance to win this series if Steph Curry had played. In that case, they would have made it to the Western Conference Finals. Now, I think the Thunder would have crushed the Warriors. They were Houston, but because they had the speed guards to match up with Steph. But they also had real rim protection and
they had the offensive firepower that Houston didn't have. But I think they would have won this series, and I think they would have been a conference finalist, which I think in the first season, which Jimmy Butler would have been a resounding success. But even getting to the second round, I think we saw the obvious way that the fit works. We saw how Jimmy Butler just kind of like connectively as a playmaker in the middle of the floor, just
accentuated and greased the wheels for this offense. They reached the level defensively with him as a defensive playmaker, not the on ball talent that Aaron Andrew Wiggins was but the work he did as just a defensive playmaker for this team roaming around the floor, you know, the fit just makes a ton of sense, and I do think
this team is worth investing in next year. The obvious need is guys who can score the ball in the flow of their offense, which means the ability to hit a jump shot running off of a screen, the ability to attack downhill when someone's chasing you over that screen and apply real ball pressure, the ability to quickly process and make decisions when you're in those screening situations, while also being a player that can defend at a high level. The obvious ceiling for that type of player is like
a Cam Johnson. We've talked about him a lot over the course of the last couple of weeks. I think he's the perfect fit as like basically Jackson referred to him as basically like a version of Klay Thompson, And in that sense, it's a kind of like a proof of concept in that, you know, we know what that looks like because we've seen that dynamic counter spacing presence with Steph and how that works. Right. Another discounted guy look at for this type of role would be Malik Beasley.
He's a guy that would be a FRA agent this summer and you could potentially get him on like a mid level exception or something like that. But if the Warriors make the slight tweaks that they need to make this summer, and if they can get some year to year improvement from younger players, guys like like Randon Pajamski. You couldn't make shots in this post You made him tonight, but you couldn't make shots in this postseason run like
your team needs you to make shots. So this summer he needs to work on specifically conditioning so that he can hit shots when the physicality and intensity picks up. We talked about it last night on playback, but there was an extended stretch to end the season, basically the last fourth of the season where he was a high
forties percentage three point shooter on like seven attempts per day. Like, we know he can make shots, it's about getting it to translate to the postseason environment when the physicality and the intensity raises. There's just another level he can get to with his conditioning. Moses Moody's game completely decomposed in this postseason run. Hit the threes tonight, but he's going
to have to be better next year. So if those guys can make their marginal improvements, if Steph just identifying that he has a real chance next year and approaching the off season in a way where he can capitalize on that, you know, Jimmy Butler coming into next season with a game that is you know, tweaked so to speak, in terms of his off season regimen to fit this particular system and getting that type of role player upgrade at a couple of position groups, they absolutely have a
real chance to make a run at the title next year. All right, let's move on and talk some Celtics. First of all, let's talk Tatum in our course correction segment. Welcome to Course Correction, brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurdles, business decision makers today are under immense pressure to get things right. They must rise to the occasion, turning challenges into opportunities.
Microsoft empowers these visionaries with AI solutions, simplified cloud and data management and trustworthy responsible AI. When you're in the NBA, you have your own hurdles to face. In this segment, we will highlight the role the player every week that has risen to the occasion when his team needed him. Whatever challenge you're facing, Microsoft empowers you with the expertise to say, bring it on. I want to use this week's course correction segment as an opportunity to shout out
Jason Tatum of the Boston Celtics. I thought this was the best season of Jason Tatum's career. Wasn't anything that showed up in some sort of dramatic way statistically. I mean, he's averaged in the previous four seasons before this year twenty eight eight to five on fifty nine percent through shooting, and played in on average, over seventy games every year. So this guy has been as reliable as statistical performer
as we've had in the league in recent history. But he just showed insane growth as a half court processor. He's never averaged over five assists in a season in his career, and he averaged over six assists this year. A simple stat to demonstrate this is he had seven
games this year with at least ten assists. He had seven games in the entirety of his career in the regular season before this year or he logged at least ten assists, But he also just showed an understanding of advantage creation, which is obviously very important for the Celtics team,
but it extends beyond assist totals. Constantly trusting basic reads like kick ahead passes, swing passes when guys were sinking off the strong side corner or sinking into nail help, simple over the top passes to guys slipping out of screening action when he was the ball handler. These are the kinds of things I've talked about with the Pacers. Like before, we just discount these as simple fundamental basketball things.
They are literally driving success in the modern MBA because these guys are all so much better scoring with an advantage than they are without an advantage, and the guy who's on the ball has that job. We're going to talk about it in more detailed context here with Jalen Brown here in a minute. But he was the kickstarter of everything the Celtics did on offense. The Celtics offense scored one hundred and twenty two points per one hundred
possessions when he was on the floor this year. Then he starts this playoff run with an incredibly dominant performance against the Orlando Magic, who had an elite defense there was second best defense in the league this year. In the final three games of that series, he averaged thirty six, ten and six. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, his
game completely fails him. In the first two games of the Knick series, can't make a jump shot to save his life, goes just twelve for forty two from the field, brutally cold down the stretch, and a couple of bad losses to the Knicks. But then it all came together in one of the best playoff games of Tatum's career. In Game four Madison Square Garden, he had forty two points on sixteen for twenty eight shooting. The Knicks were
switching everything and forcing the Celtics to attack matchups. No other Celtic had any sort of legitimate rhythm in the second half of that game. He had no choice but to grab the reins, and he just hit incredible shot after incredible shot from every spot on the floor, from every type of footwork on the ball, attack, picking off the catch, getting all the way to the rim for
and ones. Just truly remarkable shot making in a game where his team absolutely needed him to be that guy forty two points on sixteen for twenty eight, shooting seven for sixteen from three. He was the only reason they
had any chance to win that game. And then his achilles goes out, and I just feel terrible for him because I can only imagine what that must have been like, the relief of seeing all those shots go in after the frustration of what happened in Game one and Game two, and I must have just felt like all of that hard work paying off in such a real way, and then something that's completely and entirely out of his control comes in and ruins everything. I just feel terrible for Tatum,
and I wanted to use tonight's segment. It's just an opportunity to talk about how much I respect Jason Tatum as a competitor and as one of the game's greats. I fully expect him to return from this injury at an all NBA level, and I'm very excited to watch him play basketball again when he returns. That's it for this week's course. Remember Microsoft's AI solutions empower you to take bold steps and make informed decisions, sparking new ideas
to help drive your business forward. With Microsoft as your trusted partner, you can navigate your journey with confidence, finding innovative solutions and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash Challengers to learn more. All right, let's talk a little bit about Celtics Nicks tonight. I want to start
with Jalen Blown Jalen Brown's floor game. We talked about this a little bit in the Tatum segment, But if you're going to be the primary shot creator for a basketball team for an entire game, it's important to understand that you're in charge of managing the flow of the game. We talked about this a lot in the don of Inmagell game. I think it was Game one if I remember correctly, but where you know, like he puts up a monster scoring night, but the Kavs just don't have
any flow in their offense. The ball's not popping around, they're not generating a ton of catch and shoot threes. Their shooters are all uncomfortable. You need to understand that in that job, like you need to take advantage of easy because your job is to create half of your team's shots, Like you might have to create forty to fifty shots in that game. Jalen Brown took advantage of the easy opportunities tonight. His transition reads good. God, the
Knicks were awful in their transition defense. They lost Derek White probably a half dozen times for wide open threes in transition. But Jalen was the guy who was probing up the floor in those transition situations and making those reads, identifying where the Knicks were making mistakes in screening action.
They ran a ton of ghost screens tonight where he's on ball and Derek White screening and slipping out, or Peyton Pritcher's screening and slipping out, or Sam Houser screening and slipping out, and he just made those simple reads there interior passing to Cornette out of the post. I just thought Jalen played a great floor game and managed his shot selection really well, combined with some legit three levels scoring, hitting mid range shots, hitting threes getting into
the basket. There was a concerted team effort that sixtends beyond Jalen Brown. But they were really trying to bully Jalen Brunson tonight. So the first time in this series I thought Jalen Brunson like really struggled. He was the guy losing shooters in transition. Often he was not holding his ground on switches the way he did earlier in the series, and the Celtics were just going right through his chest all the way to the front of the rim. But Jalen Brown set the tone with that early and
often in this game. Twenty six points, eight rebounds, and twelve assists. Tip of the cap to Jalen Brown kind of a teaser for what his role will be next season, which is to be that guy for this team. The Celtics did play extremely well across the board offensively, in a way that they have struggled to reach consistently in this series, and I thought this was an interesting example of the reality of rhythm in basketball. So Boston is
one hundred and twenty seven points tonight. It's the first time all series they'd scored over one hundred and twenty five points. Not to be clear, Jason Tatum is the best player on this team and they have no championship
seiling without him. Not trying to in any way denigrate Jason Tatum, However, this team does have a lot of high level basketball players, and one of the things that happens in those situations is there's a tendency for guys to feel like they don't want to tug on the rope, right like if you're Drew Holliday, if you're Derek White, even Jalen Brown to a certain extent, like Tatum's the guy, you gotta float through him. You don't want to shirt yourself too much. And sometimes it can be tough to
establish rhythm. And so for a game like this, again, if you went for a whole postseason run and teams could really scout Jalen Brown and scout the way you like to attack, you'd be begging for Jason Tatum back, I promise you. But in a one game sample like this, it just kind of simplified the pecking order. Jalen Brown, Derek White, Peyton Pritchard, those are the three guys that
were controlling the majority of the action. They played through them consistently, and as a result, there was just kind of like a rhythm and a flow that they missed in other points of the series. And I thought, specifically in this one game sample it fitted Boston Luke Cornett I was talking with with Jackson and Shane before we got started it. I just thought he did a much
better job of Porzingis's job. Porzingis's job in the series has been to roam off of josh Hart protect the rim while at the same time accounting for josh Hart when he's you know, driving off of those kickouts from the top of the key, or crashing the offensive glass or or you know, even just shooting threes in those catch and shoot situations. And Cornett just brought a level of activity that they haven't had really in this series. From that spot. He was you know, he had six
blocks just in the second half. Some of them were roaming off of josh Hart on other guys looking to shoot. Some of it was josh Hart catching at the top of the key and pumping and then trying to drive on Cornett and then trying to finish through Cornett getting blocked there. Oh, he's going to take a three out of the left corner. Cornette runs out out there and
blocks him there. He kept him off the offensive classic josh Hart had just one offensive rebound in the whole game, and it was because Cornett swatted his shit right back into his hands and it got logged as an offensive rebound. So he just like completely shut down in the second half, in particular, everything as that roam er off of Josh Hart. You know, Josh hit some threes tonight and still had some success, but Cornette did a ton of damage in his minutes roaming off of Josh Hart and just kind
of anchoring things defensively for the Celtics. Six blocks in the second half is incredible stuff. Like I like, I didn't do any you know, digging into NBA history, but I would imagine it's been a very long time since an NBA basketball player locked six blocks in a single half in the NBA postseason. Shout out to the Celtics. Man, these guys have their flaws, but they're a bunch of winners, and they beat the shit out of the Knicks tonight and they showed that they're not going to go down
without a fight. And on that note, this series is not over. I believe the Knicks will win on Friday, but that will not be an easy game. And if they lose that game, they're staring down the barrel of a Game seven in Boston where Boston will be will be favored. I thought the Knicks played a horrible half in that second half, just straight up not good enough. In so many facets of the game. They better be ready for a war on Friday, because it's gonna be a war and if they don't survive that one, they
could be sent out of here. And I mean already they need to be polished up in a way to prepare for what's a very dangerous Indiana Pacers team that's going to be coming their way should they get out of this series. All right, guys, that's all I have for tonight. As always a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. Again, no playback tonight, but we will be back on playback tomorrow night after the live show that we have. Again, keep an eye
on the on the feed. I think I am going to do a film session tomorrow Jackson. I think we're going to do something on Cornett's defense in the second half because I thought it was just so impressive and I just want to show some video examples of the stuff that we were talking about. So keep an eye on the feed tomorrow morning for a film session on the Celtics, and then live tomorrow night after the final
buzzer of Denver versus Minnesota. One kind of bit of fun news tonight was the last night that we're covering two games in a single night, so just one game every night from this point forward will be really zeroing in on those games and getting deeper into the weeds on them. But about halfway through this playoff run, guys, I appreciate you guys for rocking with us and rocking with the show. I will see you guys tomorrow morning. 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