Hoops Tonight - Mavericks-Timberwolves Mailbag: Luka Doncic greatness, Anthony Edwards will be back

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and some stuff about Minnesota heading into their offseason. Tomorrow, the entire mail bag is going to be centered around the NBA Finals, so a lot of Dallas Boston type of topics, right, and then Sunday morning's mail bag is going to be focused on the NBA at Large. So I just kind of took all your guys's mail bags question for all your mail bag questions from last night, and just kind of filtered them into those three categories. So Western Conference Finals today, NBA Finals tomorrow, NBA at

Large on Sunday. You guys know the drill before we

get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos, follow me on Twitter and underscore JSNLT, so you guys don't miss show announcements, don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under hoops Tonite, and then keep dropping mail back questions in those YouTube comments, and we keep hitting them throughout the rest of the postseason and the last but not at least before we get started, I want to

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That's Hops for twenty dollars off your first purchase. Download Game Time Today, Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So, first mail back question centering around the end of the Western Conference Finals last night, in which quarter did you start recording this episode? It came out like five minutes after the buzzer. In reference to the fact that our instant reaction came out pretty

quickly last night, it's funny. I had a conversation with our producers last night and I went I started working on the show right at halftime.

especially from the analytics community. There's a desire to try to like have a very clear answer, like a solution to the problem, which I totally understand. That's the way people like that are wired. And I'm wired like that

in a lot of ways too. Before I got into playing basketball in college, I was an engineering student, so I thought very much from a math perspective with things, and like that was kind of that is kind of the just the goal of everybody when they're looking at a game, It's like, how can we solve this problem? Where's the where's the simple and detailed explanation of why

this happened. And you guys know, like I love to get into that sort of thing, and we do when I think it matters, like whenever there we talk a lot about adjustments, we talk a lot about the tactics that are taking place on the basketball court, but at the end of the day, there are sometimes there are some situations where intangible things can have a greater impact.

of the first six possessions of the game. He had that run towards the end of the first quarter that turned what an eighteen eighteen tie into thirty one eighteen or something like that. If I remember correctly, that Luca snatched their confidence at the start of that game, and then Minnesota stopped executing. They started kicking the ball all over the floor where they have nine turnovers in the first half. None of them can make a shot. I

literally thought that was the game last night. There was no tactical adjustment, There was no fancy explanation for what happened other than Luca went into that arena and he destroyed the Minnesota Timberwolves and they never had any chance to regain their footing. How does Luca no wan to effectively rest during an offensive possession every once in a while. I feel like this has never talked about enough and is so important to his game management given he is

in the top tier athlete one hundred percent agree. Rinds me a lot of the dynamic he had that Kyrie had with Lebron James. And there's two phases to this. First shout out to Kyrie Irving because Kyrie Irving's ability to kind of operate on an island by himself is a very unique trait to him that I think makes him super valuable to these do everything forwards like Luca like Lebron James, even like in Nikola Yoki, Right, I think Jamal Murray kind of plays that role for Denver as well.

got to make reads. But the unique thing with Kyrie is he can dribble the ball out the floor against ball pressure. He can use a ball screen or use a guard guard screen to get a mismatch, and he can go to work on an island, dribble twenty five times in a possession and get a good shot for himself. And it's a unique value for Kyrie. But again, the

important Piet is you got to the importantieces. You got to be able to play off the ball, and that requires you to be able to knock down, catch and shoot jump shots, which Luca has been using a little bit more frequently towards the end of this playoff run. Hey, Jason, love the show our Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively examples of what future of what the future of the center position will look like, athletic bigs, solid defenders but with

low volume scoring. Love to hear your thoughts. So there's multiple different constructs of NBA offense at this point, and you know there's I'm not going to sit here and pretend like Dallas doesn't have complications. They certainly do. We talked about in Game four. Those you guys who watched the film session are half of the film session because YouTube picked us to pieces on that one was so annoying. I was so frustrated. I spent like four hours on

that video. It was like fifty minutes long, and we had to cut almost half of the video out. That

was really frustrating for me. But in that video, I think we got to I never went back to watch the edited portion, but I think we were able to keep some of the stuff in the second half, and I showed some of the examples of stack pick and roll that Dallas was running, which is basically where you have a shooter underneath the basket backscreen for the role man as he's coming downhill, and they were doing some

damage to go Baar in that respect. So Dallas does run some complications in their offense, but they are more of what I would call a four out one in offense. So there the two primary forms of offense that I see around the NBA right now are four out one in offense and five out offense. And the four out one in offense is very simple, and it's play finishing and play initiation.

or he's driving the clothes out right. Same thing for the guy on the right wing, although that guy's usually a secondary shot creator in case Luca needs to bail out from a possession, right and then it's the guy comes up and he sets a ball screen and Luca just works in that ball screen right like that is that to me is like the four out type of offense. It's very like guys are set up to finish plays

a vertical spacer. The vertical spacer is your one in right, and then you've got your shooters in the corners and a shooter on the wing.

Golden State Warriors. This is Anthony Davis with the Los Angeles Lakers this year, right Like, this is Nikola Jokic with the Denver Nuggets, right Like, this is much more of an offensive decision making role for the big man. So like, Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively to me, are two very different types of centers. Daniel Gafford to me, is a four out, one in type of center. He's a guy that just wants to set ball screen or is at his best when he's setting ball screens and

rolling hard to the rim. And as we know, he can struggle a little bit dealing with making decisions in the short role. Derek Lively can do both. Derek Lively can operate as a four out one in center. He's a good screen and roll big who can vertically space the floor. He also can make decisions in a blitz situations where he has to kind of operate as the

decision maker in the four on three. But I also think if I picked up Derek Lively and dropped him onto the Golden State Warriors, I think that he'd be really effective in that five out system because his ability to make read and react decisions with the ball in his hands. But those, to me are the two very

different forms of offensive centers. As far as like the future of the center position, it's all about what your offense is, right, Like, there's a case to be made that the Jokic Sabonis type of group, Nurkic type of group, that that is the future of the center position for five out offenses. Like a really good screener that can knock down the occasional jump shot, that is a decision maker in dribblehandoff situations out on the perimeter. So like, I don't think that those guys are the future of

the center position. I think they're just an example of what four out one in centers look like. And even then, I think that's an oversimplification because I think Derek Lively could operate in a five out system. Anthony Edwards is the classic guy everyone falls in love with because of his athleticism, but I agree, I don't know if the decision making will ever develop to the level of Jokic or Luka Doncic. So I want to have Anthony Edwards's back here for a minute, because it's not just it's

not just the it's not just the athleticism. Obviously that's an important part of it. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like Ann's athleticism isn't appealing to people, or that that's not part of like kind of the the energy that surrounds him around the league. I just think that we're undertelling how good he was in this postseason. Again, even after that nightmarish Conference Final series, he was twenty eight points per game, seven rebounds and seven assists. Okay,

twenty eight, seven and seven. He was forty eight percent from the field, forty percent from three in, eighty one percent from the line. That in true shooting percentage is sixty percent, So he was literally twenty eight seven and seven on sixty percent true shooting. That's not just we're buying the hype. That's not just Anthony Edwards is a

media darling. That's fucking awesome basketball. That's awesome basketball for six weeks against Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, and Devin Booker and against the defending champs with the best player in the world in Nikole Jokic. And while he was inconsistent defensively in this postseason run, a big part of how they won Game seven was his defense in the second half against Jamal Murray during the entirety of the Minnesota run in the second half where they went from down

twenty to up five, he held Jamal Murray scoreless. So again, like there, obviously we're in love with his athleticism, but there's more to it than that. The dude showed real jump shot making ability once again. This is the three third straight postseason where his jump shot has been resilient into the Throughout the playoffs, he's been a really big personality in his ability to kind of like just be fun to watch on television to invigorate his teammates and

be a leader like I think I had it. I was annoyed last night because this is something that happens every year, by the way, every year there's like a new team that kind of starts to have some success. Like this year it's Dallas. Last year it was Denver. The year before that, it was gold State, the year before that was Milwaukee, the year before that, it's the Lakers. Right In every single year, their fan base goes, actually, we're the next great team and everyone else sucks and

we're amazing. And then we get to the next year and then something happens, they lose, and a new team takes that spot. And in that kind of energy from that fan base, whoever that fan base is, there's this desire to like put everybody else down, Right, Like every Denver fan like just had victory laps on the on the Suns and the Lakers for an entire offseason, right and then it's like then they end up losing in

the second round this year. You know, Warriors fans lots of victory laps after the twenty twenty two season, and then the Lakers beat them in twenty twenty two, right, Like at the end of the day, like this stuff tends to be fleeting as a result of the fact that the league is very, very deep. There are certain teams that I think are resilient, Like I do think Denver will be back, right, Like I think Dallas in particular is built for some sustained success over the next

few years, so I think they'll be back. But like the idea that these teams are just gonna rip off three four championships in a row, that's just not how this works. And like, for whatever reason, Dallas fans can't just appreciate that they're having success and that they're gonna get praise in the media. It has to be no. But also, Anthony Edwards is a bum and that's just stupid. He averaged twenty eight seven and seven on sixty percent for shooting at twenty two years old in the NBA playoffs.

That kid deserves flowers too. As far as Anthony Edwards in the big picture, I pointed this out on Twitter last night. But in Lebron James's age twenty two season, the Spurs embarrassed him. He shot like something crazy like thirty six percent from the field in that series. He shot twenty percent from three, he averaged six turnovers a game. He was nightmarishly bad in that Spurs series. And guess

what now? Lebron is like unanimously regarded as at least the second best player of all time, if not the best. So like Anthony Edwards, is he as good as Luka Dancic? Yet no, Luca badly outplayed him in the series and clearly demonstrated a gap between the two of them. Specifically, I think one of the things that this playoff run emphasizes that Anthony Edwards lacks matchup versatility at this point. If he's going against teams without athleticism on the perimeter

and rim protection, he's going to demolish you. But as soon as he runs into matchups like that, it gets a little bit more difficult. That's something he's going to have to confront in the future. We're actually going to get to that later on in this show. But don't use this playoff run to bury Anthony Edwards. That's silly. He's going to be back. If you're under the impression that the twenty two year old that average twenty eight, seven and seven in the conference finals to eliminate the

defending champs and that super team Sons team. If you're under the impression that he's not going to be back on this stage, you're fooling yourself. He's going to be back, and he's going to be better, and that kid has so much room to grow because of his supreme athletic tools. I do think he's going to be by the time he's Luca's age, by the time he's in that twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven, I think he's going to be

on that tier with Jokic, with Luca, with Gianness. He's not there yet, but I think he's going to get there.

This is a little context for this question. I ranted at the end of the show last night about how if you look back through NBA history, center like you can't win a championship unless you're center is some kind of offensive threat, either a legitimate like catching finish threat or a perimeter threat, something along those lines, like the last year, obviously Jokic, the year before that, Draymond Green. He's an offensive folkrum in the five out system for

Golden State. Even though he has some limitations, he's a much much better offensive player than Rudy Gobert. Twenty twenty one, Brook Lopez twenty twenty two, Anthony Davis right, even in their big looks, like Dwight Howard was like a much better catch and finish player around the rim than Rudy Gobert was twenty nineteen. You know, we had Serge Ibaka and Mark Gasol, right, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green in the seventeen eighteen, Kevin Love in twenty sixteen, Tim Duncan

in twenty fourteen. That we can go on and on on, Chris bosh in two thousand, on the heat teams, Derk Novisky, although that team with Tyson Chandler. Tyson Chandler was more like Derek Lively, a much better type of a vertical spacer and decision maker on the role.

But the other piece of that too is like some of his spacing limitations, like Lively not being a shooter is not a problem because one Lively can make those decisions. Two Lively is great hands and catches and finishes everything around the basket. And then lastly, Luka Doncic is a deeply manipulative passer that can get really high quality opportunities around the basket. The problem for Rudy is he's not playing with that level of playmaker and he has stone hands,

Andy can't make decisions on the role. It's like the trifecta disaster for trying to score in the half court against an elite defense. Minnesota clearly disintegrated under Luca's barrage of points, but they were also down against Denver by twenty and still found a way to come back. What was different between Minnesota versus Denver Game seven and this game and why wasn't Mina Minnesota able to compose themselves like they did against Denver. Love your videos, by the way,

really simple to me. In the Denver series, Anthony Edwards and this kind of you know, I was talking with Adamatos about this last night because he pointed out fairly Dallas or that Denver actually had a better defensive rating against Minnesota than Dallas did. But some of the data there is a little tricky because that was like two different series, Like Minnesota dominated Denver outside of the middle

portion of the series. Like Minnesota in the four wins whooped the shit out of Denver, right, and then you look at the middle three games in Minnesota or in Denver beat the shit out of Minnesota in those three games, right, So the data is all wonky. And if you looked at it, Denver had a one sixteen defensive rating against Minnesota in their losses, but they had a one oh

six defensive rating in the wins. So like, if you look at it, it's like in those three wins, in game three, four, and five, Denver locked down Minnesota's offense. That's great, but you got destroyed in the other four games. The Dallas series was very different. In every single game of the series, Dallas guarded Minnesota well, they held him. It was like one twelve defensive rating in their wins

in one thirteen in the one loss. So in terms of like consistently holding down Minnesota's offense, Dallas was way better than Denver in the four losses. Denver just couldn't get stops against Minnesota. Specifically, what stood out to me on film, Anthony Edwards in the Denver series averaged seven point one attempts in the restricted area per game. In this series against Dallas, he averaged just five point eight restricted area attempts per game, so that's one point three

few were attempts. He also shot nineteen percent worse in the restricted area against Dallas than he did against Denver. He shot fifty five percent in the restricted area against Dallas seventy four percent against Denver. And so for me, what stood out was every time there was a half court situation, Anthony Edwards didn't really know what to do against Dallas, whereas against Denver, he just felt like he could get to his spots more easily at the rim

and debt. That's why Denver had to just start hard doubling all over the place. Now, Dallas also did some doubling against against Minnesota as well, but they have more rim protection and athleticism on the back line, which allowed them to rotate out of it better than Denver did. Like they would load up the side against Ant and then he'd swing, swing, and then all of a sudden, nas Reed would be slashing a close out and Dallas.

Denver just didn't have the athleticism to hang on that backside, right, And so like the Denver series, by the way, I'm only talking about one side of the floor. The offensive side was the same. Like in the Denver series, Minnesota held them to something crazy like one hundred and six points per one hundred possessions for the entire series, whereas Dallas averaged like one hundred and eighteen points per one hundred possessions. So Dallas's offense was way better against Minnesota's

defense than Denver's offense was. And so really in the Denver series, it was like Minnesota actually was capable of slowing down Denver's offense and they were actually able to score, whereas against Dallas they couldn't do either. And so that's why, even though there was another large deficit, I just never felt like Minnesota had a shot to come back in that game. My jaw dropped watching Lively at the level of the screen stick with Ant as he tried to

string Lively out to attack the rim. He literally had to reset the offense with his defense in space at seven feet, his rim protection and a short roll passing. What are we watching some horrifying fusion of Draymond and AD. I wouldn't go that far. I feel like that's a little early and a little bit hyperbolic. But I am really really excited to see the tie of player that

Derek Lively becomes. I imagine him being like a Tyson Chandler two point zero, like an evolutionary vertical spacer that has the ability to run five out to operate more in space. I actually think he's got good touch, so I'm really curious to see over the years if he adds a pick and pop element to his game. Like I think Derek Lively can be very very good. But like you're fusing Draymond and Ad is fusing the two best defensive players of this era.

meet that over the course of his career. The issue with the idea of Minnesota moving away from their amazing inside defense and focusing mostly on perimeter defense is that you do not beat Denver in a seven game series if you value perimeter D more than inside D and without the double big man setup you cannot slow down yolkis the te Wolves do not beat Denver if they do not have Gobert at the five.

and just some of the narrative stuff surrounding him. I thought the bigger factor in Denver struggling against Minnesota was Naz reading Karl Anthony Towns, and it's because those guys could hold up under the bully ball attack of Jokic because of their bigger frames, right, Like I actually thought Gobert got mostly fried by Jokic in that series, and then by the end of the series, Jokic kind of had figured out the stunting that Gobert was doing and that was a big part of how Denver got back

into it because Jokic was just killing him in that middle portion of the series. That like, obviously it's gonna be tougher to beat Denver if you don't have Gobert, but I still think they can because they'll have a two big look with Naz reading Karl Anthony Towns. And this is in this scenario that I've discussed, if they pivot off of Go Bear, they would upgrade that power forward spot to a really high level offensive player. And let's not forget that during the stretches were Denver dominated

in that series, they really slowed down Minnesota's offense. And so again, I think you can still build a team that can beat Denver without Rudy Gobert. And it doesn't matter if the Go Bear lineup can beat Denver, but you get your ass kicked by Dallas because Go Bear's stonehands and his inability to make decisions on the role, then you're not in any sort of better position anyway.

It's not about beating Denver to win the title. You got to be four teams to win the title, so you might have to sacrifice a little bit of your capability to beat Denver to make yourself more versatile to beat the other teams around the league. Hey, Jason, love your show. Such an enjoyment. To hear your breakdowns after each playoff game helps appreciate the game at a whole new level. Thank you for the kind words. Want to

hear your thoughts on the Wolves. People say defense wins championships. However, when I look at the Timberwolves, it seems like they really lack an offensive identity. How could it be fair to expect the cat to play well when he could get benched when Reid plays a bit better one night, or his defense simply that much more important than knowing how many shots or reps are going to get each night. For example, Kat having dumbfouls versus getting consistent shots each game.

Lebron James level playmakers. That's not their game. Those guys are. They're the entirety of their game is predicated on downhill rim pressure and pull up shooting over the top. Right, That's what they're built on, and so you need to build the you need to build the roster around their skill set. Let's not forget this team was seventeenth in offensive rating all season. This team was had a one hundred in four offensive rating in crunch time, they were

a god awful crunch time offense. This was a consistent issue all year that two favorable matchups against Denver and Phoenix made it look like their offense was better than it actually was. Then they ran into a team with rim protection and got strangled. So the reality is is this team has a flawed offensive construct and they will

eventually run into teams. We talked last night about the standings and looking at the different teams with rim protection, and I mentioned OKC, and I mentioned the Lakers, and I mentioned Dallas another big team I missed, and there's

Memphis Memphis could rejoin the picture next year. They will rejoin the picture next year, and it's gonna be a lot of Jaron Jackson and Brandon Clark on that frontline, and they have guys that can guard on the perimeter, Like it's going to be similar challenges if you run into a Memphis. So like half of the playoff field next year is going to be elite rim protectors again, and so this is gonna be a problem that they

have to deal with in the future. And so to me, they have to build a construct in this roster that is less reliant on Cat and Anthony Edwards's ability to pick apart the defense because it's not just the Rudy piece. Like Rudy obviously is a problem because he can't catch and finish consistently, but Dallas was throwing a lot of late help and Cat meaning like Ant would drive and then the low man would just bail out of the corner and come over a wall up on Ant like

as he's getting into the lane. So he's not just challenging Gafford or just challenging Lively, He's challenging multiple bodies in there. And Ant is not the kind of player like Luca or like those other playmakers I mentioned, who's just gonna pick you apart by making those last second reads really effectively. So you have to make things easier on your stars. If you're gonna be built around Cat and Anthony Edwards, you have to generate natural spacing so

they can have really simple shoot drive pass reads. You have to make it very simple for them. That to me is the direction that they have to go in terms of their roster construction as the Wolves fan and I find your argument about Edwards and Gobert's fit very coaching. Something Ant can never seem to figure out is lobs to Rudy, he has shown flashes, but can never put

it together when he needs it. I do wonder what five would work best for him, maybe at Goberart For Miles Turner trade, great analysis as always, thanks again for the kind words. That's an example like go Behar and Miles Turner, that trade probably won't ever happen, especially with the dollar amounts. Gobert makes a ton of money and

that's going to make the trade difficult. As I said last night, I actually think Gobert probably ends up staying in Minnesota just by virtue of the realities of the contract, and he's got a player option that he's almost certainly going to accept. So Gobert basically has two years left on his current deal, and it's very possible that he's

in Minnesota for both of those. But that is the type of swap that would make some sense for me in the sense that Miles Turner is a pick and pop big, that would make for easy because like again drop coverage like Dallas is running with Gafford and Lively.

like a shooting center is ideal. But I think their best bet there is to try to flip Rudy to a team that is actually willing to aggregate the salaries if they can, and target something more along the lines of a power forward, and I have Kat be that shooting big. I really do think that Kat if you simplify his role as well, because again he's driving and dealing with the Gobert problem just as much as Ant is.

And so for me, like if you if you could get a Portland to trade you a Jeremy Grant for a Rudy Gobert or something along those lines, if you could are a three team deal that sends eight and r Gobert to a different destination. If you could do something like that, that to me is where I view the ultimate version of this team is Ant and Kat playing in a space floor surrounded by shooting guys that can defend guys like Jada McDaniels, guys like Jeremy Grant.

If it ends up being Mike Conley different player in the future, that to me is the direction I would eventually go as far as go Bear though, yeah, like I think he has to play on a team that has an elite playmaker. I think that's the only type of team that he would be able to actually win at the highest levels with. With Dallas advancing to the finals, there's a debate going around on who are the best backcourt? Who is the best backcourt in NBA history? Growing watching

Golden State when I was in high school. I don't think there's a better backcourt than Stephan Clay. I want to know what rank do you have for them? If there is one better backcourt than them, who would it be. Thank you for your ANALYSI has been a huge fan of you so far this year and a half that I've been following you on YouTube. Thanks again for the kind words and.

like Steph Curry. Like Steph Curry for the most part is being hidden defensively as much possibly as he can because he's got such a big offensive role, right, So like to me, it's more like duos. And when you're ranking duos, ranking Luca and Kyrie is a much more complicated topic because you're looking against you know, hundreds of duos over the course of the last few decades, right, So like that's something that's more of something that we

get into in the offseason. But to me, I don't really find the conversation around best backcourt even a relevant here because I don't look at Luca as a traditional backcourt player. To me, Luca represents where the game has changed, which is and your best player has the ball in his hands, you know, Like Lebron James plays power forward for the Lakers, and he ran the point a lot in this postseason run for the Lakers, right, but he's not guarding point guards, right, So Like to me, I

don't look at them as a backcourt. I just look at them as a star duo, the way I'd look at Paul George and Kawhi Leonard for instance. Hi Jason, I agree with your Gobert assessment, but Kat has more trade value, So I think he'll be the one that gets moved and Nas shifts to a starting power forward role. If that happens, where do you think is the best landing spot for Kat? Detroit has the cap space to

absorb him as the starting center. They immediately get a go to score and a floor spacer to help Caden Ivy a sar Can mimic the McDaniels role as well as anyone. New Orleans is another option. The Pels get their center, they could space the floor for Zion to attack the rim and Ingram McDaniel's Gobar front court has plenty of length. Any other spots that come to mind, All those make sense to me. Another couple that I looked at Milwaukee, like Carl Anthony Towns next to Giannis

would be a really interesting type of build Miami. I think a huge lineup with bam Adebayo and Karl Anthony Towns could be interesting. Oklahoma City was another one I thought of, Like imagine Chet Holmgren as more of the role Rim protector, basically just putting Kat next to a shooting version of Go Bear, And that's the type of

situation you could have there. But like again, I wouldn't trade Karl Anthony town simply because I think Gobar is a much bigger issue and anytime you start flipping a player like Cats really hard to replace his value, especially considering like in a lot of postseason situations this year, he was one of their more reliable scorers, and I say that as he was still inconsistent, but in terms of guys next to Aunt, he was probably the most

consistent scorer, certainly was the most consistent scorer of that group. Three more questions. Dallas is playing out of their minds, can't miss a shot? Fun to watch, looks like the Serbian Slovenian Balkan brothers of Joki chu Luka will dominate two years in a row. But overall, as a very long term NBA fan, this year's playoffs have been disappointing. I thought this was going to be one of the most competitive playoffs ever, and it's been one blowout after another.

Even the Nuggets Wolves series that went seven didn't have a single game that was really competitive or interesting. One of the most boring playoff stretches I've ever seen. Hoping the Dallas Boston series will actually be interesting and worth watching, so I'm actually more optimistic about it. I think there's an important piece of context that kind of throw all.

that is typical. The problem is is we didn't get as much of the competitive series because the Eastern Excuse me, because of what happened in the Eastern Conference. And there's two things that happened in the Eastern Conference. I thought there were five good teams in the East this year. I thought it was Boston, Milwaukee, Indiana, New York, and Philly.

Those to me were the good teams. Orlando, Cleveland, Miami without Jimmy Butler after the injury, just not legitimate competitive basketball teams.

the entire series, and Dame misses part of it. Right, So like all, like if that had balanced better, Like if two of the good teams were on the same side with Boston and the other two were on the other side and Boston had to play a real team in the second round and everyone was healthy, I think we would have had more competitive basketball games to kind

of balance everything out. But because the East was a basically a shit show, the only real good series there was like New York Philly, Right, the Indiana New York series wasn't very entertaining because they were all blowouts after the first three games. But like that, the East being a shit show kind of made it so that we didn't have as much competitive basketball. But I still thought there were a lot of really inner retaining games that

Lakers Nuggets series. For a five game series, every game was super entertaining, and we had two buzzer beating game winners.

plenty of entertaining basketball games. And also I think Dallas vers Boston is going to be an awesome NBA final. I'm very excited for it. Hi, Jason, big fan of the show. I know it's a bit irrelevant, but I'm just curious. If Denver had beaten the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game seven and advanced to the Western Conference Finals, who do you think would have won? Between Denver and Dallas.

I would have picked Denver over Dallas. There are a couple of key specific matchups there that would have picked that would have skewed towards Denver. First, Dallas's defensive personnel is very much set up to handle a guy like ant It's not very set up to handle a guy like Nicole Jokis. Both Gafford and Lively struggle to handle him. On an island, they would have been in double teams

the entire series. It would have been a problem. And then on the other end of the floor, the problem that Minnesota had is they never had a big, strong enough perimeter defender to handle Luca. And that's literally what Aaron Gordon's specialty is. I've seen him do it against Lebron, I've seen him do it against Jimmy Butler. I've seen him do it against Kevin Durrant. Aaron Gordon's one of

the best big foward defenders in the league. That would have been a much better matchup for Denver in that series, and so again it would have been close. I would have probably picked Denver in six or seven games, but I would have picked Denver, And as you mentioned, it's irrelevant because Denver couldn't beat Minnesota. And that's just how these Dallas fans are all super sensitive about this, similar to what I talked about earlier, where it's like the

sensitivity surrounding like just needing to trash Anthony Edwards. The other piece of it is like Dallas fans are super sensitive about you saying that they got a good matchup, and it's like no one ever won a title without getting some good matchups along the way, Like there is no such thing in this field as the ultimate dominant team. I love this Dallas Mavericks team. They're a bona fide championship contender. I had them third in my contender rankings

coming into this postseason run. Makes sense that if Denver lost, they'd be the team that would get in. Right, one hundred percent on the Dallas bandwagon, they were a five seed. This is not this is not the seventy three win Warriors. This is not the Kadie Steph Warriors. They're not just gonna obliterate everyone who comes in front of them. They're a Boston is a minus two to twenty favorite in

the finals according to DraftKings right now. So like, again, everybody has to benefit from matchups unless you're one of the all time great teams in NBA history. And as good as this Dallas team is, they are not one of the all time great teams in NBA history. And so again, like it doesn't matter. Dallas is a deserving NBA finalist. But like, yeah, if I personally would have picked Denver if they made it to the Western Conference finals, would have been close, but I would have picked Denver.

I don't understand the Gobert hate. My numbers could be a bit fuzzy, but in this playoff run, the Timberwolves allowed one hundred and ten points per one hundred possesions with him on the court one thirty three with him off. Why is this fringe player that is going to come in and essentially make a plus twenty swing. The issue is at not being good enough with the mediocre offensive

talent on the roster to overcome good defense. If you actually think that Anthony Edwards is a bigger problem for this Timberwolves team than Gobert, I don't know what.

What I'm saying is this is not a championship roster. I said this last night. To me, this Minnesota Timberwolves team is closer to the Lakers from last year than they are to a real championship contender in the sense that the Lakers got a couple of favorable matchups in the first two rounds. Right, they faced a downhill threat and John Moran in the first round so they could protect the rim cause a bunch of problems. And then they faced a Golden State Warriors team that has consistently

struggled with Anthony Davis over the last few years. They got two favorable matchups. They beat the defending champs, and then they ran into a real championship contender and got their ass kicked. That's what happened to Minnesota. They got a really favorable matchup in the first round. They played Phoenix, a pull up jump shooting team that likes to attack from the perimeter on an island, and they have all the perimeter defenders to match up with those guys. They

locked them up. They kicked their ass. Right then they ran into the defending champs. It was a bad matchup because they have all this perimeter size they have to throw at Jamal Murray. They have all this interior size that throwt Nicole Jokic. They beat the defending champs. Now that Denver team is way better than last year's Golden State team. I want to be clear, so I do think that they're better. I think this Minnesota team was better than last year's Lakers. I'm just saying they're closer

to that than they are to a real champion. Then they ran into a real championship contender, this Dallas Mavericks team that actually could attack some of Minnesota's weaknesses, and Minnesota got their ass kicked. So like again, like defend, go bear all you want. You're not a championship team.

same way about this Minnesota Timberwolves team. They are going to run into Memphis, the Lakers, Oklahoma City, or Dallas next year in the playoffs and lose again if they everready go bear on the floor, because the issue is their offensive players are slashers and pull up shooters, not high level playmakers, and they can't handle the fact that teams can really pack the paint when Rudy Gobert is on the floor, and Rudy's not the kind of guy that can easily catch and finish everything to kind of

make up for that type of flaw. So again, I think that focusing on on off numbers from this series is missing the plot. You got your ass kicked. You're not a championship team, so that is the major issue. All right, guys, that is all I have for today's mail bag. I'm gonna be back to again. I'm gonna record it right now, but uploading tomorrow morning. Will have a mailbag focus on the NBA Finals, and then on Sunday morning, we'll have a mailbag focus on the rest of the NBA.