Hoops Tonight - LIVE: WOLVES-WARRIORS REACTION: Anthony Edwards & Julius Randle even series vs. Jimmy Butler without Steph

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Then at the tail end of the show, Jackson and n word textan earlier today and I got this crazy hair brained idea for a trade. So we're just gonna purely for fun, purely in fantasy land of the NBA, We're going to discuss an idea of a trade involving the Boston Celtics for this summer as a little teasers.

dropping mail back questions in those YouTube comments. Also, no playback tonight. We're gonna take advantage of the earth. This is our twentieth consecutive live show at night, so I'm going to take advantage of this opportunity to spend a little bit of extra time with my wife tonight. But we do usually go on playback after these live shows. Make sure you guys head over to playback dot tv slash Hoops tonight for our playback after show tomorrow night.

But again, no after show tonight. We'll get back into that tomorrow. So let's talk some basketball and nice bounce back. When for the Minnesota Timberwolves. I just thought from the start they were much sharper staying attentive to Golden State's ball and player movement. The dead giveaways they played him into.

So many of these, like late clock ISOs where you know, Jackson and I were joking earlier because Jimmy Butler just seemed to he took a few of them early in the game, but there were several examples where he was kind of just passing out of those situations, and it was you could tell Jimmy kind of was sensing the moment that it was a game that might be out of reach, and so it was almost like he was

kind of holding something in reserve. Stan Byan Gundy was obviously a little bit critical of him about that, but at the same time, you could feel it. You could feel this game as being somewhat of a landslide for Minnesota from the opening tip as they go up thirteen. Oh, but the dead giveaway, so many of these light ISOs, whether it's Moses Moody or it's Brandon Pajemski, or it's Buddy Healed, or whoever it might be, with three seconds on the shot clock with an elite defender in their

face having to just throw something up. We had shot clock violations, we had shots that didn't even come close to the rim. The Timberwolves forced a bunch of turnovers and kept getting out in transition off of them for easy ones. It was just a much better defensive performance from Minnesota. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, because that's going to be an interesting trend going through the rest of the series. And then on offense, Ant is still struggling a bit with just

figuring out how to attack this defense. First of all, glad to see him come back in the second half. The way he was limping, I was seriously concerned that that might have been some kind of like severe high ankle spraying with the way that Trace Jackson Davis landed on top of him. But to have him come back in the second half obviously a good sign. You don't want to see anybody get hurt, especially in a way that could have an impact in their ability to even

be available to their team. But he's been sped up a little bit by Golden State's ball pressure, and he's definitely going to have to get that a little more under control as the series progresses into Golden State. It's a very different kind of series than the Lakers series, where he was given more space, there wasn't pressure, and he could kind of like be comfortable as he was processing the defense. The idea the old game plan with Golden State is if they can pressure Ant, he'll rush

into drives. And if he rushes into drives, he won't process the floor quick enough to be able to make the right reads when he gets downhill, and so it's gonna be key for Ant to solve that problem over the course of the series. But everyone else on Minnesota took a good step forward tonight. A bunch of their

shooters started to get into rhythm. Nas Red Nazrie, Dante de Vincenzo, Nikile, Alexander Walker, Mike Conley, and Anthony Edwards all hit multiple threes in this game, which is obviously a good sign, a good sign after the horrendous shooting that they put forth in Game five against the Lakers. In Game one of this series, we saw a little bit of Jada McDaniels getting back to some of that weak side scoring that he did in the first round.

Took a little bit of an audacious step back three over Draymond Green in the left corner that I thought was kind of funny.

Julius just had a really nice bounce back game. I thought he was really bad in Game one and really started to get his feel out of the post, just taking simple kickout reads that are there as Golden State was pinching down on him, doing some scoring in the middle of the floor. Just a nice step forward for the Wolves offense, which is gonna be the problem, like we as we move forward in this series, the job

is all mental for Minnesota. We're heading to Golden State, and Minnesota fans, if you haven't had a chance to watch much of Golden State this year, they just have this level they can get to at home, even without step on the defensive end of the floor and getting out in transition and feeding off of the energy of that crowd. They're gonna be a tough out in the same way that I kind of kind of like felt

like tonight was going to be a blowout. I think both Game three and Game four are going to be dog fights, and those the job from Minnesota on both ends of the floor is going to be simple. On the offensive end of the floor, like we talked about, Anthony Edwards not getting rushed, but him and Julius together having to process that defense when it's more engaged, when it's flying around, feeding off the energy of that crowd, not turning the ball over, not settling for bad threes.

Ants had an issue knifing through the defense and taking high degree of difficulty layups in traffic that he's missing at a high clip. But the mental processing piece is going to be key for them on offense as they go on the road and then on the defensive end again, like we talked about, it was a good step forward for them tonight, but that's same attentiveness to all the

ball in player movement. This is a team that if you can play them into those lake clock ISOs, cause again it's not like Golden States planning to take a

lake clock ISO. They're running their motion offense to try to get you to make a mistake and if you make a mistake leaving a cutter open or a shooter open, they're going to take that opportunity, right, But if you can take away those opportunities in the motion, all of a sudden, it's like Jimmy Butler's really the only guy other than maybe Jonathan Kmingo when he's in rhythm, which

we'll talk about. He did seem to build a little bit of rhythm tonight, But Jimmy Butler's really the only player that can create his own shot against an elite defender in that sort of situation, and at this phase in his career, he's not as good at it as he used to be. Right, So, like, if you can be attentive and shut down the motion, you can play

them into late clock. ISO's you got a great chance to win Game three in Game four on the road, But if you lose sight of that and you let Golden State feed on the energy of their crowd and a couple role players get confident, they will hit open shots. As you guys know, I mean, that's what happened in game one after Steph went down. Every time Minnesota made a mistake, they knocked the shot down and it just wasn't anything that they were able to regain control of.

You got to play these guys into those misses, and so it's they have the physical tools necessary to do the job, but they've got to have the mental focus and discipline, attention to detail to get it done on the road. And I do think they need to win

both of those games. I think if they end up in a scenario where Golden State takes this thing to two back to Minnesota in Game five, even if you win, I think Steph Curry's going to come back in that game on the eighteenth, And as we saw in Game one, I think this is a tough matchup for Minnesota when Steph is healthy. Now whether or not he'll be healthy enough to even be a factor remains to be seen, but I think Minnesota needs to be going to the Bay with the goal of trying to win both of

those games. Now on the Golden State front, we talked about this last night in playback. We talked about it two nights ago after Game one, but we viewed this game too as basically a game that Minnesota was going to win and was going to win by a lot. It's just the combination of a bunch of factors. We talked about this last night with Oklahoma City versus Denver.

On the one hand, your road team is a veteran team that already stole home court advantage, So there's such a natural pullback in terms of effort, focus, and energy because you know you're going home with home court advantage. We just saw that with Denver last night with Oka See. Also, just like Oka See, Minnesota is a damn good basketball team, a damn good basketball team led by really good players, so like they got the talent to have a bounce

back the game. It's also an absolute must win. Unlike the Boston series, Boston is arguably more comfortable on the road than they are at home. Unlike the Boston series, Minnesota could not afford to go down Oh too. It was like an absolute must win type of game for a great team against a veteran team that had already taken home court. There was a natural pullback that was

gonna happen. And so one of the things we talked a lot about over the course of the last two days was how can the Warriors get some sort of positive progress out of this type of game that's going to be so difficult to win, and the key was a couple things we talked about giving Jonathan kaminga long leash. Now we discussed it more within the context of him

being in the starting lineup. Wasn't in the starting lineup tonight, but he did get twenty six minutes and got plenty of opportunity to create his own offense, and he scored eighteen points on eleven shots. We'll zoom in on that in just a minute. But the second piece of it was digging way deep in the rotation and giving a ton of guys opportunity. Right, Steve Kerr ends up playing let me count.

opportunity to test a lot of things out. A simple thing after the thirteen to zero run Quentin Post gets the hook goes to Tray Jackson Davis. Tray Jackson Davis was impactful in this game. His athleticism pop fifteen points and six rebounds was really providing some of that rim pressure at a ball screen action, just rolling hard to the rim and getting vertical. As much as Quinton Posts is a very good player, we've joked on the show,

he can't jump over a a phone book. He's not exactly the most athletic dude in the world, Tray Jackson Davis brings some of that vertical pop. I thought that that was a kind of like a useful little bit of information that came out of this game. And then the second piece of it was Jonathan Kaminga had a little bit of success in face up situations and ISOs got comfortable as a catch and shoot player. Hitting another corner three. The one he missed in the fourth quarter

two I thought was pretty close. He looked like he was in good rhythm there. Diggy hit his first eight shots in this game. He just started to build some

of that rhythm. Why that matters is because in those games in Golden State, I think in order to win one of them or let's put it this way, you give yourself a good chance to win one of them if in one of those two games, Jonathan Kaminga had as a twenty twenty two point night, and I think that he was in such a funk coming into this that tonight was the perfect opportunity to just give him a long leash and just see what he can put together in terms of rhythm building towards Game three and

Game four. Again, like I said, with Minnesota on the Golden State front, the goal needs to be like obviously the goals to win both games, but if you can get one game in Golden State and you can send it back to Minnesota too too, you guarantee that you're playing on the eighteenth, And if you're playing on the eighteenth, I think there's a decent chance that Steph Curry comes back and plays and gives you a chance to win the series. If you win both, obviously you're in fantastic position.

But if you can win one of those games, you give Steph Curry the chance to return in twelve days. All right, Welcome to course correction brought to you by Microsoft. Just like star players and teams navigating performance hurtles, 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, simple fight cloud

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Week is Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. On Monday night, we saw the best playoff performance that I've seen since Steph Curry scored forty three points on the Boston Celtics in the twenty twenty two Finals in Game one against the Thunder, just two nights after he led his team to a victory in Game seven against the Clippers on the road against one of the best statistical performing defenses in the history of the NBA, against the team that had already won seventy two games in this season sixty

eight in the regular season, in the four to zh sweep in the first round, he goes for forty two points, twenty two rebounds, six assists, a steal in two bl in the fourth quarter, he walked the thunder down, just dominating in the middle of the flour. He had eighteen points just in that fourth quarter, keeping the Nuggets in striking distance so that they could have a chance to win the game.

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finding innovation, innovative solutions, and reaching new possibilities. Visit Microsoft dot com slash challengers to learn more. All right, so here's the deal. I'm gonna bring Jackson on stage because he's our resident Celtics fan as well in addition to being very important to the process of this show. But Jackson and I were texting earlier today and I want to This is a disclaimer upfront. Okay, this trade's not

going to happen. It's unlikely for a variety of reasons, but I want to talk about it because it's fun. We have some time, and after a boring game like that, it's nice to have a little just to get into fantasy land a little bit.

the case. It's being widely reported that the Celtics are going to start finding ways to cut payroll as soon as this summer. In this theoretical scenario, the Celtics have just again this is important context here this. I'm only pitching this in the event that the Celtics lose to the Knicks. So they lose to the Knicks. The reason why in this hypothetical scenario, Okay, so the Celtics have just lost the series as a minus eight hundred favorite,

literally because their stars shit the bet. So the premise would be that the Celtics roster would lose a decent amount of talent as part of the cost cutting, and they would suddenly drop to a second tier contender because their stars aren't good enough to lift that roster, so they wouldn't be really good enough to compete anymore. Another way to reframe the situation is, this is a very short window of contention for the Celtics. Maybe next year,

maybe the following year. Giannis is a much better basketball player than Jason Tatum and has developed into an excellent passer this phase in his career. You'd be surrounding him with a roster that fits his skill set super well. He's the kind of player who could capitalize on that short window to get you a second championship. Presumably he could still win even if they lost two of their core five. So let's say they lose Drew Holliday and krisops Porzingis. Those are the two guys that they look

to shed salary. You still have Giannis, Derek White, Jalen Brown, Horford probably comes back on a minimum. You have Hawser Pritchard, Luke Cornett. You still have like a solid rotation around him. Then in two years, when Jannis is thirty two years old, if he loses the juice and the roster isn't good enough, you can still flip you honest to another team to restock your asset trope. Case for Milwaukee really simple. Tatum has literally four years and an option after this season,

and he just turned twenty seven. You can rebuild around him, and you probably could get a couple draft picks out of Boston in the deal that you can flip to help improve your role player talent. So essentially, for Milwaukee, it's a bet on Tatum's future, and for Boston it's a bet on this current roster just needing better play from the star. So Jackson, in this hypothetical scenario, you're the GM of the Celtics, they offer Giannis for Tatum, what are you saying?

that's totally a valid take. What are people expecting Jason Tatum to be traded?

don't I don't hate it. Of all the if you're gonna offload one of your two stars, I don't want to in the if they're gonna shake things up this summer, which they're probably going to payroll. We're if they lose to the Knicks in a weird way, you're probably making some sort of significant trade. If if you're saying you're gonna trade one of a major shakeup, if you're expecting a major, major shakeup for the Celtics, like getting Giannis

is the best case scenario for a major shakeup. So in that sense, I don't hate it, and I think you're actually absolutely right that it's even with the departure of whoever drew Howaday, Kristaps won or both of those guys for salary purposes, it's still a close to perfectly designed roster for around Yanni's much better than I would even argue the championship level the Championshi Bucks roster, Like he's never played with the player as good as Joan Brown.

He's never played with the player even as close as good as Joe Brown, frankly.

drop a couple of bodies. Let's call it porzingis, And like, let's call it porzingis in Holiday, just as an example, even if they just get rid of porzingis, okay, they just get rid of porzingis. Horford's a year older, Drew Hollidays a year older, Derek White's a year older. Are though Derek White, Tatum, and Brown are still firmly in their prime. So in this scenario, like you are a less talented version of this year's team that just got

eliminated in the second round in embarrassing fashion. So in that scenario, like you look forward and it's like, actually, they're completely hamstrung other than draft picks. They have draft picks, but they don't have any like free agent flexibility at all. You're in this situation where you have to ask yourself, like Cleveland is going to get better as Evan Mobley gets better, and as Darius Garland gets better, and as

Jared Allen gets better. You look at the East and it's like all the sudd the Pistons are looking a little bit frisky as a team that could be a problem in the East. The Pacers right now are playing at extremely high level. You have the thunder who are going to keep getting better. You have Wemby and Darren Fox and who knows what else they're going to do this summer. Houston could make a trade for Kevin Durant.

Like the teams around you would be getting better while your team would be getting worse and we would have just seen them not be good enough. And so then you ask yourself, like, Okay, now Tatum's twenty eight to twenty nine years old, are you even close to good enough to win the title with your roster that you had.

And that's where I think it gets fascinating. Essentially, what you're saying is like this roster is destined to some form of blow up anyway like Tatum as like like in this hypothetical where he's, you know, had these two kind of somewhat disappointing playoff runs, he.

some sense on that level. But again, I think I think the part, the part you mentioned about the human element is real, Like I just don't think Boston would do that to Tatum. But yeah, if he throws a couple of stinkers down.

Most of their roster's on one year deals. It's like I was like, oh, aj Green's okay, Okay, he's two million dollars, Like maybe that's Aj Green to make a great making great Like I don't really want Kyle Kuzma brooks on on the last year of his deal. Bobby portois Uh, I think he actually know he could be traded, but like somebody portis is okay, I suppose you could take back Bobby.

need of their careers. But if they're gonna get a little bit better each of them over the summer, you're hoping that can make up for any of the the talent drop you're getting that you're gonna have to make reportedly in a cost cutting move this summer.

easily be cold. And so that's where it gets triggy. But I I and the point you're making is fair in the sense that, like if you just bet on Tatum and Brown progressing year over year, but is it enough to make up for a substantial and loss and roster talent. The last thing I'll say about it is Joannis is thirty, Like you can easily get three great years out of him and then pivot, you know. But uh, but yeah, it's a fascinating concept. And I, for the record,

I'm still in the like gun to my head. If you asked me who's gonna win the Celtics Knicks series, I think I'd still I think I would too.

Tomorrow Tomorrow, right, No, Saturday, actually Saturday, actually.

it's still it's still right there. I just have been I've been just fascinated with the concept. I've been fascinated with the concept because we haven't really seen anything like this in NBA history, not in a very long time, and so it's like I was trying to think, like I think this would probably be the worst playoff loss, like factoring in Superstar play, like since Lebron in twenty eleven. Probably, But it's it's a different it's a little bit of

a different vibe because Lebron Lebron. No one was gonna bail on Lebron, because that one series kind of stands out as like a blip among like mostly playoff greatness, you know, but with Tatum, there are just so many of these kinds of examples, and then to have two in a row, right in the heart of his prime. I think it would be it would be weird, but we're gonna see what happens, and it is. It was just kind of a little fun thought exercise with a

relatively boring night around the NBA. That's all we have for tonight, guys. No playback again tonight, but we'll be back on playback tomorrow night. No film session tomorrow morning either, so we're gonna take a little break. We will be live tomorrow night after the final buzzer of Game three thunder Nuggets. Very excited for that game. We'll see you guys.