Hoops Tonight - Reacting to AWESOME End of NBA Regular Season

and teams as they chase glory. All season long. DraftKings has been the go to spot for NBA player props and that does not stop. Now. Want to make your playoff experience even more intense, Try placing a bet on your favorite player's performance. Well they drop thirty points, forty or more, it's your call. Ready to place your first bet? Download the DraftKings Sportsbook gap Now lock in your bets. Let's make this playoff run unforgettable. Here's something special for

first timers. New DraftKings customers. Bet five dollars to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets. Instantly make it a playoff run to remember with DraftKings. Download the Draft Kings sportsbook gap and use code hoops. That's h oops. That's code hoops for new customers to get two hundred dollars in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks only

on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called Wayne hundred gambler In New York call eight seven seven eight hope and y or text hope and why to four six seven three six nine. In Connecticut, help us available for problem gambling Call 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 and eligibility varies by jurisdiction.

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 doopsy, you're at the volume. Have you to everybody off? All of you guys had an incredible weekend. As expected. The Clippers Warriors game yesterday was incredibly entertaining

and incredibly informative. So all we're gonna do in this little short episode this morning is we're going to talk about my five biggest takeaways from the first truly important, truly high stakes game in the NBA this season, and then after that, I'm gonna give just my initial impressions on the two Western Conference playoffs series, that being the Lakers versus the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Denver Nuggets versus the Los Angeles Clippers. The rest of this week, we're

gonna have a lot of series preview content. I actually have a kind of a breakdown of that coming a little bit later in the show so that you guys can have an idea of what to expect this week. But this morning just Clippers Warriors, some takeaways, as well as my initial thoughts on the two other playoff series in the Western Conference. You guys know the joke before we get started to subscribed to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos.

Follow me on Twitter at underscore json lt so you guys don't miss announcement stff forget about a podcast for you wherever you eat you podcast on our Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. Jackson's also doing incredible work on our new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Make sure you guys follow us there. In the last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions and the YouTube comments and we can get to our mail bags throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So again, yesterday, there was a brief moment early in the day where it looked like things could get a little bit more complicated because email Udoka decided to play

his starters against the Nuggets. So now all of a sudden, you're really looking at the four or eight being literally anything. But the Nuggets came out with the requisite intensity. The Rockets did not. Udoka kept their minutes down and so that game ended up not mattering. So it ended up all coming down to that Clippers Warriors game. As I said at the top, we're going to do our five

biggest takeaways. This is going to be the schedule for series previews this week, So again we have just initial thoughts. Today Tomorrow full series previews for Bucks, Pacers and Pistons Nicks. The next day Wednesday, full series previews on Lakers, Wolves,

and on Clippers Nuggets. The two sevens will be out on Thursday after we have the results from the play in and then, just like we do every year, the one eights are always a little bit shorter and a little bit more brief, just because they're the biggest favorite usually and because of the way the schedule works, we don't even find out who those teams are until Friday night, and then Saturday morning the actual playoffs start, so I actually have to turn my attention to the real game.

So our one eights won't be as comprehensive as the other six series previews. But that's the schedule this week. Two on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, two on Thursdays. Keep an eye on the feeds. You guys will see it there. Also for your Warrior fans, we will be going live on YouTube after the final buzzer of Grizzlies Warriors tomorrow night, and we'll do a little mail bag there as well. So our five biggest takeaways from this Clippers Warriors game.

First of all, just incredible basketball. It's always amazing when you get to this time of year. There are important regular season games. There have been a lot of important regular season games in the last couple of weeks, but when you get to that final day of the regular season, it just feels different in terms of the stakes. And these were important stakes for both teams on a bunch of different levels. Right the Warriors losing dropped to the play in. If the Clippers had lost, they would have

dropped to the plan. Now you can kind of draw a little bit of a silver lining for Warriors fans in the sense that, like, if you win that game, you have to go through the Clippers and then likely excuse me, the Lakers, and then likely the Clippers right after that, because I do think the Clippers would have beat Houston in a two seven matchup, and so you would have to go through two of the top teams

in the Western Conference. If I was ordering the teams in the Western Conference, there's going to be, you know, the Thunder, the Lakers, the Clippers, the Warriors, and then a gap for me before the rest of these teams. And so the for you to have to play one of those teams in every single round, potentially this would

be extremely difficult to get through. So now, if you win on Tuesday against the Grizzlies, at least you get to play Houston in the first round, which I think is an easier opponent than both the Lakers or the Clippers. That said, I think Warriors fans would have rather done the Lakers Clippers route and not have to take the

risk of the play in. You go in there tomorrow and John Moran happens to have his three point shot going and he hit six or seven threes, and Desmond Bain's got to go in and Jaron Jackson hit six or seven threes, you could be staring down the barrel of like a Demarta rozen Zach Lavine led team coming into your building with a chance to knock you out of the playoffs. It's unnecessary risks, So obviously you'd rather

take the route of the guaranteed playoff path. But if you're looking for a silver lining, I do think it's an easier path to go Houston La ok See than to go La la ok See. So that's a little bit of a of a silver lining there. But okay, looking back at the game ends up going to ot Clippers pull it out late. I wanted to go over some takeaways because I did think there were some revealing things for both teams in terms of what we can

expect in their playoff run this year. From that game, first of all playoff Kawhi looks very much here, easily getting separation from top tier defenders, working Jimmy Butler to his spots on the floor to get easy fadeaways over

both shoulders. He was getting separated. Draymond Green did log some good possessions against him, specifically the one at the final buzzer in the fourth quarter where he just got a great contest and forced one of Kawhi's worst misses of the day, kind of like an outside of the rim miss long into the right. But even against Draymond Green, like got a clean look at a step back three in crunch time, got a clean look at a step back along the left wing along two that he made.

He was able to get separation from everybody and eventually dictate a bunch of double teams from Steve Kerr, I disagreed. I was actually talking with Jackson. We talked on the phone a little bit after the game yesterday, and I disagree with the strategy that they went with with the double team, specifically attacking Kawhi so far from the basket. One of the reasons why I don't like that is it creates a lot more space to deal with the four on three. Right, Like, it's kind of the Steph

Curry blitz concept. Right, This is what Steph Curry's been doing to teams for a decade in terms of blitz coverage. You give a guy the ball right at the high post and a four on three with like the two defenders that were on the ball way out at near half court, there's just so much space for Chris Dunn to turn around and methodically look down the lane, like, oh, you know, this guy didn't step up, so I'm gonna shoot the little floater. Oh, this guy did step up,

so I'm gonna throw the little lob to Zubats. It's like a very easy kind of like order of operations there. Kawhi is not the greatest passer of all times, so like I would have rather had you double Kawhi, Like as he's going into more of a scoring position, So like, if he's dribbling out by the three point line, just tell your man to pressure the ball, pressure him and funnel him to a specific side where you're planning the

double coming from. And then as he puts his head down and starts driving, that's when you bring the double team and you can kind of capitalize in some of Kawhi's playmaking weaknesses. But I disagree with the strategy, but it is what it is. Kawhi ends up drawing all these double teams and they're able to consistently generate great shots out of it. But it started from the basic concept that nobody on the Warriors, an elite defense in this league, could make Kauai uncomfortable as he was just

dropping whatever he wanted from anywhere on the floor. That bodes extremely well for the Clippers, right, Like, so much of what we talk about with the Clippers comes down to like this theoretical concept of like, well will Kawai be able to give you four playoff rounds? Well, here's the thing. It's April fourteenth or here now, Like Kawhi is healthy right now, with no games between now and his playoff series with the Denver Nuggets that starts on Saturday.

So like he's here now, and he looks like Kauai. So at this point I feel like it's wishful thinking for him to get hurt. Maybe he will get hurt, who knows, but like it's very likely at this point that Kawhi is going to be healthy for this playoff runt in a way that it wasn't when we were discussing this theoretical team back in October. In November, I think that Bo's extremely well for Clippers fans. Kawhi Leonard looked like the best player on the floor last night.

Kawhi when he's at his ceiling, is very capable of being a top tier superstar in this league, and it just fundamentally alters the talent level that is on this Clippers team. They looked like an absolute problem yesterday because of Kawhi and the ceiling that he's able to reach. Two I vi'sa. Zubats is on the doorstep of becoming one of the star centers in this league. Big, huge, important game, twenty two points, seventeen rebounds, got a bucket out of the post. He was doing a lot of

different types of floor spacing. We talked about the vertical spacing on the lob from Chris Dunn in crunch time. He had another example of spacing like that Isaiah Hartenstein style floater spacing on a James Harden drive past Gary Payton where he went down the lane line had just shoveled it off to Zoo just outside the left block, and he was able to shoot that little floater over the top. He was destroying them on the offensive glass. He was just an absolute problem. I cannot wait to

watch him battle Jokic for a full series. I think it's a very interesting matchup because of his size. He's one of the few guys in this league that's actually big and strong enough to cause some disruption for Nicole Jokic's base. Zoo is on a run and I cannot wait to watch him play some really high stakes basketball this week. Third big takeaway playoff. Jimmy Butler apparently is still a thing. I can't ever remember watching a player that has had more ability to scale up from his

normal production in high stakes environments than Jimmy Butler. I wish he would have been more aggressive in crunch time, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit here in our fourth piece. Like Steph was just running out of gas a little bit late in the game once we got into the final minute of the fourth quarter. But for the most part last night, with the scoring in the playmaking, was able to leverage it in a way that was deeply impactful. He looked springy.

He was getting to the rim, he was dunking, he was getting lots of lyft on his jump shot. Little concern with that need of the quad that he caught late in the game from Kawhi, especially just because they have to turn around and play in a day. That said, I do think the Warriors will dispatch of Memphis and he will have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off, So I think he should be fine. Jimmy looking great, I

think is huge. I was talking with my friend Sam's fondi a who covers the Warriors with the Light Years guys, like about a week ago about Jimmy and just like some of his scoring scalability and like this was the big question mark. Was he gonna be the Jimmy that we saw in the regular season that's just kind of like a cog in the system that kind of helps

elevate everybody and the Warriors look really, really good. Or is he going to be the twenty five plus per game point scorer that can like actually raise the ceiling of this team to where it needs to be to win the title. And even though it's just one game, I thought that was a very encouraging start to that run from Jimmy Butler. Four, the Warriors offense is still way to Steph reliant, kind of to the point where

it doesn't actually make sense schematically. Like Brandon Pajemski is playing incredibly well, continues to play incredibly well, played incredibly well in a high leverage game again yesterday, Jimmy Butler was scoring whenever he wanted throughout the majority of that game. But there's this thing that happens when they get into crunch time where all of a sudden, it becomes no one shoot but Steph. The only way you're allowed to shoot off of Steph is if it's like specifically in

the flow of those like four on three. So like, yeah, Jimmy will score on a cut off of a Jimmy off of a Steph Curry backscreen, or Brandon Pajemski will take a you know, wide open three at the top of the key out of a rotation situation that Steph generates. But there's no willingness for Jimmy to like come off of an action and look to score. There's no willingness for Brandon Pajemski to come off of an action and

look to score down the stretch of these games. It's like Steph tries to create something and if it's not there, it's like find Steph again, Like wherever Steph is, just give it back to Steph. And it's like, while I get that, because I agree with Steve Kerr when he had his rant with Buddy Heel to be like, hey, look it's Steph Curry's great a shoot of all time,

should probably give him the basketball. I don't disagree. But there's this thing that happens when you get into these super intense physical games where Steph Curry, because he's not the greatest athlete in the world, can sometimes struggle to get a shot off. Like over the course of the final six minutes of the game, he was incredible for the first stretch of crunch time that like just lighting the world on fire. Relocation, threes off the dribble, threes,

getting to the basket, and transition. Steph was cooking them. But over the last six minutes he was running out of gas. He had three turnovers. He had a turnover in the final minute of the fourth quarter. He had two turnovers in the fourth quarter or in the overtime. Excuse me, you only got one three point shot off and then entire span like Steph was struggling to get a shot off. And so that's what you got Jimmy

Butler for. Like what happens in those situations is when things get really physical and really tight and no one's open. It helps to have a forward who's big and strong, who can put his elbow into a dude and create a passing angle for you to just throw him the damn ball and he can turn and just shoot over the top of somebody. Because that's the advantage of being

the great athlete, right. Like Steph has to run in circles until someone fucks up so that he can get open, Jimmy can just stand there at six seven with lots of strength and a good strong base and great lyft on his jump shot to be able to create a shot for himself. And so I think it would behoove the Warriors to at least have a little bit more balance down crunch time of these games to where you're still trying to get the ball to Steph and everything

is still flowing through Steph. But hey, if it's like, you know, nine ten seconds left on the shot clock, it might be time to get Jimmy to the high post and ask him to try to draw foul by like ripping through him, pump faking, or trying to get to a spot in the middle of the floor so he can elevate over the top for a little ten foot jumps out over the top of somebody. There needs to be more variety down the stretch of these games.

It's just so many of these games look just like that for the Warriors, where it's just Steph running around in circles until someone fucks up, and there just needs to be a little bit more variety and a little bit more confidence for Steph's co stars to be able to take some initiative late in games. And then, lastly, the Warriors have a little bit of a fifth starter problem. They had this issue yesterday where they're like, Okay, we who are we gonna close with? Are we gonna close

with Moses Moody? Are we gonna close with Gary Payton? Are we gonna close going big? Like what are we gonna end up doing? Right? And so they end up going with Gary Payton, And the problem with that is Gary Payton wasn't particularly having too much success with James Harden. James Harden was still getting dribble penetration on him pretty

much whenever he wanted. Shout out to James Harden, by the way, like two just absolutely massive threes in overtime, the transition three out of the right corner and that little step back three that he hit at the top of the key, some great dribble penetration sequences that led to quality shots. I thought Harden was fantastic yesterday, but Gary Payton was struggling in that particular matchup to keep

him away from the basket. And then on the offensive end of the floor, it gives you a third player that no one has to account for as a shooter. I saw my friend roch Topolua I used to cover the Lakers with years ago. He tweeted out after the game, like it's Gary Payton, it's Draymond, it's Jimmy Butler. It's three guys that you don't necessarily have to like worry about being aggressive at the three point line in crunch time, like they will take them. Like we saw Draymond take

one out of the right corner that he made. We saw Jimmy randomly after like not shooting in crunch time at all. We saw Jimmy randomly just just take a

super heavily contested left corner three. But like, they're not guys that are going to catch wide open on the three point line and typically look to be super super aggressive, and that just gives a ton of opportunity for those other three guys, the defenders, to leverage their attention a little bit more towards Steph and so, but then you go to the Moses Moody thing and it's like, Okay, well, Moses Moody has been really struggling to shoot the ball as of late, right, and Moses Moody is not as

good of a read and react player as Gary Payton is. That's a big part of why they go with Gary Payton. When Draymond missed the layup right in the final minute of OTI, it's a read that Gary Payton made out of the short role. Gary Payton has a ton of experience running screening action with Steph Short, rolling into the middle of the floor and playmaking out of it, where

Moses Moody does not. So like that's the issue. Is like, okay, so you can go with the three and D guy, but then you don't have the playmaking talent, and Moses Moody hasn't been a very reliable three point shooter. Or you can go with Gary Payton and you're gonna get a better defender, but he's small and struggled with James Harden's size, and he doesn't shoot the three well even

though he can do the read and react stuff. And so that's where, like, you know, when I look at the big picture for the Warriors as we go into next season, who knows what's gonna happen this year. There's still plenty of time for this team to regain the momentum that they lost here in the last week, and they could potentially go on a title run this year. I'm not right off by any means, but if they go into this summer, that's the position I think they

need to look to address. And that's where it's like, Man, if you could somehow flip you know, minga and and something else for Cam Johnson and bring in like a like a really high level fifth starter, that's where this team could potentially vault into that like top top tier of teams in this league. So let's take a couple of looks at our Western Conference first round series. So

Clippers Nuggets. My initial thoughts, I was surprised to see that Denver was favored, even though they do have home court. The Clippers have been playing better basketball for a very long time, like much better basketball for a very long time than the Denver Nuggets. I struggle to see how Denver regard the Clippers. James Harden in ball screens is the classic conundrum that Denver has struggled with, which is a pull up shooter that you have to bring Jokic

up to the level against. Also a top tier playmaker in this league that can make the passes out of those sequences to consistently get Denver and rotation. That's a problem. As you saw in overtime and in crunch time, Norman Powell can attack closeouts. He attacked to close out off of the left winging crunch time, got to the basket for a scooping layup attack to close out out of

the left corner. In overtime, drove along the baseline and had a really nice little slaloming move around the rim protector to get a reverse layup on the right side of the basket. That's the type of weak side scoring that has been devastating the Nuggets throughout this entire stretch where their defense is falling apart. You bring Jokic up to the level where's zoo Zoo is now getting all the way towards the rim with inside position on everybody.

He's gonna crush everybody on the offensive glass. Are you going to guard Kawhi Leonard with Aaron Gordon? He's the only guy physically capable. Christian Brown is too small, Michael Porter Junior would get thrown around like a rag doll, Peyton Watson's too skinny. Aaron Gordon's the one guy who

can physically match up with him. Here's the problem if you bring and I talked about this in other playoff series in the past, when you bring Aaron Gordon out to the perimeter to guard, he is no longer the low man support behind Jokic. Jokic is a weak rim protector that consistently has to go up to the level that it's consistently running back and forth to the perimeter. You need Aaron Gordon on the back line as the athlete that can clean things up at the rim and

help side situations and clean up the defensive glass. If you put him on Kawhi gonna Kawhi is gonna space him out and occupy him, and it's just gonna leave an athletic deficit on the back line. I think it's That's my initial impression is I just don't see how Denver is going to really successfully guard the Clippers. Now. To be clear, Denver will also be able to score. Michael Porter Junior will almost certainly have size advantages shooting

over the top. They'll put either James Harden or Norman Powell on him and he's gonna be able to shoot over the top. And then because of help on Jokich, there's gonna be opportunities for Christian Brown to slash off the wing or to cut along the baseline. Aaron Gordon's shooting the ball extremely well for a long time. I think he's just a good shooter now, so like he's gonna get clean looks as they're having to swarm around Jokic. But the Clips do have more traditional matchups for Denver

stars than vice versa. For Denver, they have to take their lowman to occupy Kawhi. That's a problem, that's a non traditional thing that messes up the backside of their defensive scheme. They literally don't have the ability to contend with James Harden. That coverage is gonna get annihilated. They don't have traditional matchups there. You go over to the other side of the floor and it's like Chris down and Derek Jones Junior are a classic chase over the

top bother pull up shooter type of players. They are a clean natural matchup for Jamal Murray. And then, in a league that doesn't really have many natural matchups for Nikola Jokic, Avita zubats is as close as you can get to a natural matchup for NICOLEA Jokic. He's big and strong, one of the few players in the league that actually has the size to bother Jokic's base a

little bit. Again, I expect Denver to score, but I always look at playoff series in a very basic concept the context which team is more likely to make the other team uncomfortable. Do you think Denver's defense will make the Clippers offense more uncomfortable? Then the Clippers defense will make the Denver offense. And for me right now, it looks to me like the Clippers would be able to make Denver's offense more uncomfortable than the other way around.

That's just my initial impression. Again, I want to be very clear, I've not done my prep yet for the series. That's the goal for this week. I'm going to watch a ton of film. I'm gonna dig into numbers. I might change my mind on this, but my initial impression right now is that the Clippers should be favored to beat the Nuggets and that I would pick them to win that series. Same thing for the Lakers Wolves. These are just my initial thoughts. Reserve the right to change

my mind. But I can tell you as a fan, I was experiencing a great deal of anxiety worrying about how to guard the Golden State Warriors. They were a team that caused me anxiety on both ends of the floor because one, I don't think they have the foot speed to guard Steph, and then once you start throwing a lot of attention at Steph, playmaking talent is how you capitalize on that. I'm more worried about super smart, high high IQ teams incrementally breaking down the Laker defense

than teams that can't playmate. The Warriors have all that playmaking talent. They were a team that I thought was going to be able to score against the Laker defense. And then on the other end of the floor, it's a team that switches a ton, super high IQ and excellent in rotation at like speeding guys up, which I thought could cause some problems for Laker role players and capitalizing some of the indecision for Luca and Lebron. I would have still picked the Lakers versus the Warriors. I

think they're a better basketball team. But I thought it was a really tough matchup, and it was something that I was worried about and I didn't want to see, and I would rather see after they dealt with Dylan Brooks, you know, kicking them in the balls for two straight weeks.

So that was what I was That was the ideal outcome for me Timberwolves as a fan again, And I might change mind after digging into the numbers a little bit, but and digging into the film, but I think it's the perfect matchup for the Lakers as a first round series. The only team that I'd feel more confident in them beating out of the teams that were beneath them in the standings that they could potentially face in the first round.

The only team I'd feel more confident in them beating is Memphis, and Memphis had no chance to get out of the eight because they've just been playing really bad basketball for a while. This was the team I wanted. Here's my basic reasoning, surface level right now, before I dig into the film and do the comprehensive breakdown. One

the Dorian Finney, Smith, Ruby, Hatchamurro lineup. The lineup with Austin, Lebron and Luca, the lineup that I've often said is the only other team other than Boston with their lineups with Horford to perzingis the only other lineup in the league that can truly present elite advantage creation with elite five out spacing. That's the only lineups in the league that can do that right now. Five guys where it's like, you can't leave this guy open. If you leave him open,

he's just gonna hit shots. If you leave Dorian Finn Smith open, he's gonna hit shots. If you leave Ruy open, he's gonna hit shots. If you leave Austin open, he's gonna hit shots. If you leave Lebron open, he's gonna hit shots. And Luke is probably gonna have the ball most of the time, so like it's a lineup that can really truly space the floor, that lineup will either play Rudy off the floor or at least neutralize his rim protection. Rudy, when he can sit under the basket,

is a devastating defensive player. When he switches onto the perimeter and has help behind him, he's a devastating defensive player. When he has to guard in space, his defensive value is mitigated a bit because he's not protecting the rim. He's defending out on the perimeter, which he does well, but not exactly as well as elite perimeter defenders. And then is he bringing enough offensively on the other end of the floor to justify him being out on the court.

That is the question we will see if it's very possible that we uh seecres Finch basically just be like, we're gonna leave Rudy out there, and even if we lose some value in certain places, we're gonna gain value elsewhere. We'll see, but that unit at the very least should be able to neutralize Rudy's rim protection. Once you neutralize Rudy's rim protection, now you're allowing Lebron and Luca to pick on matchups without having to worry about being deterred

when they get to the rim. I think that that is a huge advantage for the Lakers. Two, the Wolves perimeter guys, all their perimeter defenders are way too small for Luca. As we saw in the Western Conference Finals last year, Jada McDaniels is just too skinny for Luca. He can throw him around. He's one of the very best perimeter defenders in the league who can't guard Luca. And that is like just a really difficult situation to manage, right off the stop, right off the top. I wanna

there's a potential here to like tinker with matchups. So you could imagine a situation where you take Jada McDaniel's and you put him on Austin Reeves instead, because he at the very least can stop Austin Reeves. But then it's like, now you're asking Anthony Edwards and Julius Randall to guard Lebron James and Luka Doncic, and that's a problem because one ant can't navigate screens, So if you put him on Luca, he's just gonna run him through screens. We saw that at the tail end of the Western

Conference Finals last year they tried on Luca. It didn't work. Put Julius on Luca. Ah, that's gonna be barbecue chicken. And yeah, you could put Lebron on you could put Anthony Edwards on Lebron, but now you're leaving Julius on Luca and that's just a huge problem. If you don't put Jayden on Austin, Who's guarding Austin? Is it going to be Mike Conley? Like Austin's gonna cook Mike Conley? Like there's so many different like matchup issues with the

way that Minnesota can disperse their perimeter talent. If I was coaching the Timberwolves, is what I would do is I would lean a lot more into like Dante DiVincenzo, and I would deploy their best defenders on Lebron in Austin and try to mitigate them as much as possible, understanding that you're probably not going to do much damage

to Luca anyway. So maybe like put Jayden on Lebron and put Dante on Austin and essentially have those two be uncomfortable all series and just see if Luca can do enough damage to you and try to wear him

down with physicality over the course of the series. But the bottom line is the Wolf's perimeter guys are just not necessarily big and strong enough to bother a Luka doncicin Lebron the way that like you see from Houston for instance, or when Golden State like deploys Draymond and Jimmy on the perimeter and stuff like that like that, those options are just not available to Minnesota in this series.

And then lastly, as an advantage for the Lakers, I think, as I mentioned earlier, what worries me the most for the Laker defense is playmaking talent. The reason why is there's a lot of smoke and mirrors with JJ Redick's defense. They don't have rim protection, they don't have a ton of elite perimeter defenders that usually are hiding at least

two targets on the floor at any given time. But what they do is they just have a ton of like elite defensive game planning in terms of like funneling guy into where they specifically want their help side set up. They're good in rotation. They've got a couple of athletes on the floor all the time that are flying around

and helping recover situations. You need to break down the Laker defense with incremental playmaking, like creating that initial advantage and the guy drives a close out and then another guy makes a great read and a guy makes a smart cut. If you do that kind of stuff, you can pick the Lakers apart. And the Warriors have done that in their most recent matchup against the Lakers. This

Timberwolves team is not a good aggregate playmaking team. They're a team that I think would be susceptible to a lot of the gimmicky stuff that JJ Reddick will do. I expect an assortment of double teams against Anthony Edwards. I expect a lot of pressure being put on Ants to be an elite playmaker in this series. I just think from a matchup standpoint, a lot of stuff just kind of lines up with the Lakers' strengths and avoids some of the Lakers' weaknesses, and so I think it both.

I think it's just a really favorable matchup for them. Now again, where another opportunity for the Timberwolves in this series. Where the Lakers struggled in the past with Aunt and Julius Anthony Edwards in particular in their last matchup, even though the Lakers controlled that matchup from start to finish, they were funneling Anthony Edwards. They were doing the same defense they used against shake Yos Alexander, So they're funneling

him towards the sideline, like opening up their stance. Basically, they did this against Jalen Brunson too, if you remember they used it against Shay. They use it against Jalen. They used it. It's basically their defense against elite star guards in this league. They funnel him towards the sideline with like basically a catch waiting. So a helper like that's already zoned up on the strong side outside the block,

like waiting for that drive. And Ant did have some success in that game, being like, oh, you're gonna give me a runway, Well, I'm way more athletic than you guys, And he would just shoot that gap and he'd be

right in the teeth of all the help. But he's such an elite athlete that he would either just finish over everybody or he would do that slow down step he does and wait for everybody to la Hi back on the ground before he goes back up and score An did have some success against that defensive game plan before he got ejected in that game. And then lastly, Julius Randall over the years has had some success against

Ruey Hotcha Mura. It's something I've talked about on the show before, the idea of like holding ground with your shoulder. Ruey has a little bit of a tendency to give ground against physicality, and so if Ruy Hatcha Mura gets the Julius Randall matchup instead of Lebron James to start the game, that's something I could see Ruey having some

issues with. It's very possible that the Lakers deploy Lebron on Jaden McDaniels thinking they can use him as a roamer, and I think they could end up in some situations where Julius gets comfortable if they do that. So I don't want to sit here and pretend like Minnesota doesn't have advantages. They obviously do. I just think the Lakers have more advantages in this matchup. This was the matchup that I was most comfortable with as a first round

series for the Lakers other than Memphis. Again, we're gonna do a deep dive as we get later into this week, but those are my initial impressions. It's all I have for today is always a sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. I will see you guys tomorrow morning with series previews on the Bucks and the Pacers and the Pistons and the Knicks, and then again tomorrow night for the Warriors play. As always, appreciate

you guys, and I will see you that. What's up guys, As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It 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