The volume. We're this close to crowning a new NBA champ, and with the action heating up on the court, it's even hotter. At DraftKings sports Book, an official sports betting partner of the NBA. There's only so many games left, and Draftking Sportsbook has you covered with same game parlays, live betting odds, boosts in so much more. Don't miss out or you'll have to wait until next NBA season to place your bets. It's super easy for first timers
to get started. Try betting on something simple like picking a team to win. Go to the Draftking Sportsbook app, select your squad, and place your first bet. It's that simple. The championship odds right now as we head into the conference finals according to DraftKings, Boston's at minus one point fifty, the Timberwolves at plus two to seventy five, the Mavericks at plus five hundred, and the Indiana Pacers a long shot at plus twenty five hundred. New to DraftKings, listen up.
New customers can get a no sweat bet up to fifteen hundred bucks. Just deposit at least five bucks and you'll get a bonus bet back equal to your first bet if it doesn't hit alough the DraftKings sportsbook gap now and use code hoops that's h oops. That's code hoops for new customers to get a no sweat bet up to fifteen hundred bucks if your first bet doesn't hit only on DraftKings, the Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler or in West Virginia, visit
www dot one eight hundred gambler dot net. In New York, call eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope and why to four six seven three sixty nine. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling called eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino and resort In Kansas twenty one plus age
varies by jurisdiction. Void in Ontario. One no sweat bet per new customer issued as one bonus bet based on amount of initial losing bet. Bonus bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. See DKNG dot co slash bball for l eligibility, wagering and deposit restrictions. Terms and responsible gambling resources. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody up. All you
guys are having a great start to your week. We're doing our second series preview for the Western Conference Finals, the Dallas Mavericks taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves. Going to get into all the details of that series, you guys know the drill before we get started. To subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore
jsonlt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts on our Hoops Tonight, and then keep dropping mail bad questions in those YouTube comments so we can keep hitting them.
Throughout the rest of the postseason.
All right, Last, but not least, before we get started, I want to talk to you guys about game time. We have two rounds left for you guys to get out and see some of these NBA stars in person. Obviously, we love watching basketball, but there's nothing like being there in per and the urgency, the star power, the environment in those arenas. You guys got to get out and see these guys live in person. This is where game Time can give you, guys, a great experience buying tickets,
especially at the last minute. They have all in pricing, so you know exactly what you're going to be paying, no surprises. When you go to check out, you can check out and as soon as two clicks, so there's no sort of convoluted process. You also get a great view of your seat before you even show up to the arena. I had a great experience with them earlier this year when I went to McHale Center to watch the Arizona Wildcats, and again Last Minute, got a great deal,
got a great seat. It was just a great experience. I want you guys to check it out. Take the guess work out of buying professional basketball tickets with game Time. Download the game Time app, Create an account and redeem code hoops that's hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase terms apply again. Create an account, redeem code hoops Hoops for twenty dollars off. Download Game Time today. Last minute ticket gets lowest price guaranteed. All right, let's talk
some basketball. So the season series between the Wolves and the MAVs almost useless for us in terms of results at least Minnesota one three to one. But I think Kyrie and Luca only played in one of the games and it happened to be the one that Dallas won. The two of the games Luca and Kyrie missed entirely none of the games involved PJ. Washington or Daniel Gafford. So not really anything to look at in terms of
the results or the number. As a matter of fact, as I've done with some of the other series, I'm not even going to list some of the numbers. There's just no point when two of the games that are basically poisoning the data didn't involve either of Dallas's stars, right, So not going to get into that. I think Kyrie missed three of the four games, so we're not going to go through the numbers. But there was a lot
of interesting stuff in the film. I have twelve clips of film We're going to go over at the tail end of this video to kind of demonstrate some of the coverage concepts that I'm talking about when we get in to the matchups. On the gambling front. According to DraftKings, Minnesota is currently favored at minus one seventy. That's pretty substantial. They're viewing them as a clearly discernibly better team at
least going into the series. Not hard to imagine why after they impressively take down the defending champs on the road in Game seven and at many points made them look like they were really, really struggling.
Right.
We went into extensive detail in a film session yesterday about what Minnesota did to shake Denver's foundation. In case you guys missed that, you can find that a little bit further back on our feet. So let's start with Minnesota on offense. Early in the season, there was a lot of Josh Green on Ant, but for the most part it was Derrek Jones Junior. And I think that's the matchup we'll see to start this series. I think Kyrie will guard Mike Conley, Luca will probably guard Jaden McDaniels,
and then we'll see PJ. Washington on Karl Anthony Towns, and then obviously Daniel Gafford or Derek Lively on Rudy Gobert. Very different challenge for the Wolves than what Denver was, right, because Denver obviously is very fundamentally sound defense, and they have a lot of big bodies and a lot of length, but they're not a particularly athletic team, and they're not a good rim protection team. Dallas is much more athletic on the perimeter and much more athletic at the rim.
Derek Jones Junior is a longer and better athlete than KCP. You could make a case that KCP is a better perimeter defender depending on who you ask, the very different types. But Derek Jones Junior has been an excellent perimeter defender this season and most of this postseason, and I more or less view him on that same tier. And I think he's got a little bit more length than athleticism.
His weakness is he's a little thin, right, and that'll manifest in some different ways with Anthony Edwards, which we'll get to in a minute. But Derek Jones Junior is a much better athlete on the perimeter than most of the guys that Anthony Edwards has been going against in this postseason run. Also, Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford represent a rim protection element and we saw that in a big way in the Oklahoma City Series flat out cause
problems for the Thunder. And so when we look back at the Denver team, you know, not only is are there a weak rim protection team under any circumstances, and Yokic had a bad defensive playoff run, so not anywhere near the same level of rim protection. You can see that in the stats. By the way, Dallas has allowed just forty two points in the paint per game in this postseason run. Denver has allowed fifty. So it's another
level of rim protection, another level of perimeter athleticism. I do think that's going to present some challenges for the Timberwolves. Now let's take a look at the individual matchup of Derek Jones on Ant to start, So again, I think his length will be more of a factor in ball screens than it will in ISO situations. One of the things with ISO situations for Derek Jones, and I noticed this on the film, He's a little thin, so when
Ant gets angles on him. You know, we talk a lot about these leverage battles those are you guys who watched the show yesterday will remember I demonstrated a couple of plays where At drove by Jokic, and there was one at the top of the key where Kat Pump faked and then ripped to the right and then Jokic slid and took the contact more or less on his left shoulder. But kat won that battle and blew through Jokic's left shoulder and got all the way to the
rim and drew a foul on Aaron Gordon. That's that leverage battle. It doesn't matter how quick Derek Jones Jr. Is to beat Anthony Edwards to a spot if he doesn't cleanly get his shoulder in the center of his sternum, if it's anywhere off to that side, and it will just blow through that shoulder because he's so damn strong and has so much downhill force that he brings to
the equation right. So like in ISO situations, I more or less think it'll look like what it looked with KCP, which is he's just too small to handle all of that downhill force. But I do think Derek Jones his length will be a factor in ball screen. So when A's running, let's just say a traditional pick and roll with Gobert and go, Bear's rolling hard and Ant's coming
over the top of the screen. In those situations, Derek Jones being able to stay relatively attached over the top his long arms and his ability to get contests from behind can be a factor on ANT in ball screens. I'm actually really curious to see how often ANT avoids ball screens altogether for that specific reason, because of that
bracket that they can bring into the equation. In terms of coverages, they ran a lot of ice, which means they tried to deny Ant the use of the screen and funnel him away from the screen, particularly towards the sideline, and then a lot of deep drop, but there was some high drop mixed in. Now where that becomes different. That's very different than the aggressive high drop trapping that we saw from Denver.
Denverhead Yokic up at.
The level to start the series, and over the course of the series brought him even further out to try to get Ant to get rid of the basketball. There were traps and then in io situations they were straight up doubling him. Now, this is where the difference. This is a difference between personnel. Right, Jokic's strength on defense is he's got high IQ and he's with his hands.
So it actually makes sense to bring him up to the level because he's gonna be more disruptive there than he could ever be at the rim because he's not a vertical athlete, right, Derek Jones or excuse me, Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively. They are vertical athletes, so they actually can be more impactful back at the rim than
they can be up at the level. And so I do think we'll see, at least to start the series, a deep drop coverage icing side ball screens, trying to force him towards away from the screen and towards the sideline. But we'll see, similar to what happened with Michael Malone, if Aunt gets going in some sort of serious way, we could see kid mix things up and be more
aggressive again. The challenge there for Aunt is, do you guys remember the Milwaukee Bucks game earlier this year where the Bucks ran deep drop the entire game and then Aunt and Mike Connley couldn't score enough in the mid range, couldn't hit enough pull up jumpers. That's kind of the nature of that coverage. It allows you to defend things
too onto. The main reason why is when you're in a deep drop coverage, you keep the roller and the ball handler in front of you, and when the roller and the ball handler are in front of you, you don't have to bring that third guy in to tag the roller, which allows you to defend the action two on two and stay home off the ball right in a high drop. As soon as go Bear rolls, you have to tag from the weak side, which essentially is defending the action three on two, which leaves openings for
the skip pass right. And so that deep drop could make actually force Mike Conley and Anthony Ewards to beat the coverage by scoring and again driving into rimp protection. That can be a problem, as we saw for Oklahoma
City in the last round. So I think they'll start with a deep drop coverage and then if Ant just gets cooking and starts averaging, you know, thirty seven to thirty eight a game in the early portion of the series, that's where I think we could see them get a little bit a little bit more aggressive in their coverages for Karl Anthony Towns. We didn't get to see PJ Washington with Dallas against Minnesota this year, but it's a similar challenge to what Aaron Gordon faced, right, and Pj's
a similar type of athlete. You got to flatten out cats drives, beat him to spots with physicality, and force him to make shots over the top. Because when it comes time to make shots over the top. Cat can be somewhat inconsistent. That's what breeds is inconsistency. But we've seen Kats won that battle a lot over the years
over this playoff run. I should say specifically in game seven, like he beat Christian Brown to the basket, he beat Reggie Jackson too the basket, he beat Jokic to the basket twice, like he was slashing a lot in Game seven, And so if you lose control of that situation, that can go south for you.
But PJ.
Washington's challenge is going to be to contain that. I think a big story of this series is going to be in the event that Ant runs into some issues with the rim protection and Derek Jones Jr. One of the other advantages Denver Dallas has. Excuse me, Minnesota, I'm getting all my teams confused. One of the advantages of Minnesota has is they've got Cat and nasried to attack size mismatches, and they're just a lot more size mismatches for Minnesota to attack in this series than they had
in the Denver series. So that'll be a different direction for them to go. Keys for both teams on the Dallas front again, I think you start with deep drop, try to keep the bracket tight around Ant. That means back pressure from Derek Jones, the drop coverage, just offering those contests on those mid range shots, right. I think you start there and just wait to see if Aunt can burn you consistently with the straight ISOs when Aunt wants to try to attack Derek Jones just in like
a slashing situation without a screen. That's where you're going to have your rim protectors sitting off of Gobert, just sitting in the paint. It's more or less the same type of coverage situation, right, and it's going to have to beat people off the dribble and then make contested mid range jump shots, flatten out Karl Anthony Town's drives like we talked about. And then lastly, this kind of
is connection between both ends of the floor. But offensive process for Dallas is going to be huge in this series. They have struggled to turnovers at times during this postseason run, and if you do that against Minnesota, that's a death sentence just like it was against Okay.
See, because they can get.
Out and transition so well on the Minnesota front, don't fall for the trap that Oklahoma City fell for, don't drive and repeatedly try to finish over their rim protection. We'll see maybe Aunt is just such a superior athlete that he just cooks those guys at the rim all series. Maybe that's what he does. But if early in the series it becomes clear that you can't relative like regularly finish over the rim protection, that's where rim decisions will
become a huge factor. Once you get into that spot, making the right kickout passes and not falling for the trap that Oklahoma City ran into, repeatedly challenging the rim protectors. Rim protectors catenance shot making, and I'm gonna throw Conley in here too. Elite rim protection calls for more mid
range shot making. That's just kind of the natural kind of order of things, right, Like Jason Kid's gonna do everything he can to keep that length directly under the basket and to make things difficult for you around the rim, so over the top shot making will be key. And then, lastly, similarly, similarly to what we talked about with Dallas transition opportunities, so Minnesota needs to look to run as much as possible to avoid that loaded up rim protection.
Moving to Dallas.
On offense, I think we'll see Jade McDaniels on Luca, Anthony Edwards on Kyrie Irving, Mike Conley will probably guard Derek Jones Junior, Carl Anthony Towns will likely guard PJ. Washington, and then obviously go bear on Gafford or Lively. Let's talk about go bear ball screens first. So one of the things I noticed on film they were a little bit more aggressive with Gobert than I was expecting. There was some high drop, some trapping, some low drop, but
mostly against Kyrie. Then I noticed in the film Luca, though for the most part, didn't look to target Gobert, he was mostly going after Carl Anthony Towns in ball screens, and in those situations, at first they were doing a lot of switching, but Luca was just easily getting to a step back jump shot on Cat and then they started hedging, and then when they got to the hedging,
they would just basically drive. Luca would drive past Cat and then try to turn the corner and try to kind of keep that head of same going against Jaden, which obviously opens up things in the slip as well. And I think that's gonna be kind of the direction this series goes is a lot of attacking Conley and attacking Cat, those guys hedging and then guys like PJ. Washington and Derek Jones slipping out of that and them trying to play four on three against Minnesota and rotation.
So the rotations are going to be the key of the series defensively for Dallas. Let's get to those keys. So with Dallas, hunt the entry points again if you similar to what we were talking about with Minnesota on offense, if you play into their bracket, meaning if you just keep attacking go Beart and Jada McDaniels and Anthony Edwards all series long, I think you're gonna run into some issues. I do think you want to attack ant for a
reason we're going to talk about in a minute. But if you attack their best defensive players, especially in the biggest moments when they're really really engaged, I think that could go south pretty quickly. So attacking Conley and Kat, they're gonna hedge or trap. So that's where you're gonna get your four on threes by slipping out of those, and then it's gonna be about decision about decision making and shot making in those four on threes. The second
piece put Anthony Edwards in screens. He has a lot of offensive responsibility for this team, right, and as we've seen throughout this playoff run, when he gets tired, his screen navigation tends to suck.
Right.
You can get a lot of switches that way where Ant will die on the screen and then you end up having to put you know, a Karl Anthony Towns or somebody like that on the ball, which is where Kyrie and Luca can look to go to work, so especially in lower leverage moments, because we know what Ant
can do when the high leverage moments are there. As bad as Ant was navigating screens early in the series, like in Game three and four, in particular, in Game six and seven, An was just an absolute menace on the ball, And like we talked about in that video yesterday, straight up removed Jamal Murray from the game by chasing him over the top of screens and funneling him into
their size. So like, I don't see that as an issue when the shit hits the fan, I don't see that as an issue in the big, high leverage moments. But during the meat and potatoes of the series. Put it in a bunch of screens, because if he dies on screens, that'll generate some openings for you on offense. And then last, take care of the basketball. If you start turning the basketball over, it will be a problem. Again, Dallas was the highest turnover percentage team of the remaining
four teams that we have in the conference finals. Use your length, use your athleticism, you can cause some problems there. Right, So Dallas has to take care of the ball. On the Minnesota front game playing discipline for Conlee and Kat Again, what that means is good hedges that cut off the driving lanes. If you throw a good hedge, you will cut off the drive and force them to quickly pass
from there. It's just rotation basketball. That's like being on a string, every guy knowing what their next rotation is and just getting back into your spots out of it, which is something I think that Minnesota has demonstrated they can do, especially through all their double teams of Jokic.
Over the course of the last round.
Dallas showed some vulnera vulnerability to turnovers like I talked about earlier. So just using your length and athleticism to get out in transition, and then lastly, physical ball pressure on Luca, like we saw last last round with Loudort. If you just like just beat the hell out of Luca all series long, He's going to have moments, especially
when he's missing shots, where he gets super frustrated. He starts focusing on the refs, he starts to like kind of his body linguage, starts to overly emphasize what's going on with his knee. He just he just kind of loses focus on the game hand. We saw that a couple of times in the last round, and so try to play Luca into those tendencies by being physical, by trying to frustrate him, kind of similar to what we saw from Jamal Murray in game two in the last round.
Like they can you can fluster a team, you can fluster a player with extensive ball pressure. My predictions, again, I viewed this as a very different type of series than the last round because Dallas is just an entirely different type of athletic matchup for for Minnesota. Dallas, again, we don't think of them as an elite defense because of some of their metrics from the regular season, but
they were an elite defense to end the season. They were elite defense in the first round against the Clippers, and they were an elite defense in the last round against Oklahoma City. We have to start thinking of them as one of those top tier defenses in the league, and it all stems around elite point of attack defense from Derrek Jones and PJ. Washington and Josh Green when he's in the game, and rim protection from Daniel Gafford
and Derek g Liively. I think it's a very different challenge, and I do think they will play Minnesota into some really bad offensive stretches, which is why I'm picking Minnesota. But in six games, I do think that Dallas is going to get some wins against Minnesota by playing their offense into bad stretches. That said, I think the overwhelming physical assault of Minnesota, just like we saw with Denver, has the ability to rattle the foundation of an offense.
They can go through some stretches where they absolutely strangle even truly elite offenses. Denver again has that has been one of the best half court execution teams of the last five years, and there were stretches where Minnesota didn't just slow them down but made them lose composure. That is the ability that Minnesota has to break your foundation. And I do believe that in the aggregate of this series they will have more wins against Dallas's offense than
Dallas's defense does against Minnesota's offense. The last kind of piece to look at here is Anthony Edwards versus Luca. I did a thing with the Nerd SESSH guys on Friday, I think last week was after Game six of Minnesota Denver, and in that stretch, if you guys remember, I talked about how like for me, Anthony Edwards is like fast on the rise, the like I would probably take a healthy Luca over him at number two right now. I just think he's a little bit better as like a half court surgeon.
Right.
But the problem is is Luca's knee has been messed up and he hasn't been nearly as consistently good as he's been in previous playoff runs, right, And so with the knee injury kind of being factored in, I think that ant is more or less like kind of on the same level as Luca and has a chance to outplay him here. And that's the thing is like if you were trying to if you were trying to put together a pathway for Dallas to win the series, it's
pretty simple. Darre Jones Junior in rim protection, stifle Minnesota's offense, and Luca gets back to that like consistent, top tier, superstar level that he just hasn't been at in this postseason run. So like that's the thing, is, like he wasn't able to get there against Oklahoma City often, he wasn't able to get there often against the Clippers. He had moments, but it was not the same consistently great Luca that we're accustomed to seeing in the playoffs for
the most part. Right, So what makes you think he's gonna suddenly figure it out against Minnesota? Right, Minnesota is just a better defense than any of these other defenses that he's faced. That said, Luca conquering that challenge is the pathway. If he can conquer that challenge, I do believe Dallas's defense will slow Minnesota down for extensive stretches. So if Luca can solve this Minnesota defense consistently, that is Dallas's pathway to win the series. That said, I
am picking Minnesota in six. I'm super excited for this series. Lots of interesting basketball, kind of chess pieces moving around, tons of star power between Anthony Edwards, Kyrie Irving, Luca, and I think we got to include Karl Anthony Towns in there now after how he's been playing in this postseason run. Can't wait to get into it live on YouTube after the final buzzer of Game one on Wednesday night. So I want to be clear picking Minnesota. Absolutely think
Dallas can win the series. They have advantages that they can go to, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, and if Luca plays well enough, they can do it. But I think this Minnesota team is playing on a special level right now, so I do believe they will win. Our guests, that is all I have for today. I will see you guys tonight after the final buzzer of Celtics Pacers, and then again tomorrow morning for a film session on that game before we get to Game one
of this series on Wednesday night. The volume