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You guys are having a great week. Well the Minnesota Timberwolves, they're back against the wall, get a huge win on the road in Dallas to extend the series. Now we're headed to Game five on Thursday night back in Minnesota. I'm excited to break Game four down from the perspective of both teams. You guys are the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops and I YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JCNLTS. You guys don't miss
show announcement. So forget about our podcast feed where if you get your podcast on our hoops tonight and keep dropping mail bag questions in those YouTube comments. We keep hitting them throughout the rest of the postseason. All right, let's talk some basketball. So obviously there's an important kind of like, you know, sub subtext, a little bit of footnote on tonight's game. Right, Like Derek Lively, who is a very important piece piece of this Dallas Mavericks team,
missed the game. You could argue he's probably their fourth best player I think behind PJ. Washington and Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic, and I want to be clear that certainly plays a role in what happened tonight, But I want to give Minnesota credit because I thought even if Lively had played tonight, it might not have made that much of a difference, because I thought Minnesota outplayed Dallas
in this particular game. And even though Lively is super important and he's going to return to this series and Minnesota will have to beat the MAVs with Lively on the floor in all likelihood to advance to the NBA Finals, Minnesota just played a really good basketball game today, and I think just overly focusing on the Lively pieces missing the boat, and it's a disservice to a really good game that they played. I thought they just outplayed Dallas.
They came out, they punched him in the mouth early, they responded to every Mavericks run, and they flipped a couple of key factors that they had been losing earlier in the series. First of all, they finally won the half court battle for the first time in the series. They outscored Dallas ninety eight to eighty six in half court points per one hundred plays. A big part of that was the over the top shot making. Anthony Edwards made seven jump shots, Kyrie Irving and Luca combined to
make six jump shots between the two of them. Kat made four of his own. So you got out shot in terms of your over the top shooting from your stars. Eleven made field goals to six and again, like that's not unlively, that's just those guys missing shots. It's a credit to the defense. It's a credit to ant in Karl Anthony Towns making shots over the top or excuse me, overall jump shooting for both teams one point one to nine points per jump shot for Minnesota, one point zero
two for the Dallas Mavericks. In the clutch situation that we got that we've had in every single game in this series, for the first time in the series, ant actually out executed Luca in the clutch. Aunt hit two jumpers and he had three separate assists to Karl Anthony Towns and Luca hit that three. He had that one to three in garbage time, and he drew that foul on the pump fake against Carl Anthony Towns. But other than that, an assist to PJ Washington. He wasn't generating
baskets the same way that Anthony Edwards was. That was the first time in the series. There are four games that I thought Aunt actually outplayed Luca in this game, so credit to him. Again, Like they won the rebounding battle, Minnesota dominated points in the paint, and so like, I want to just give Minnesota credit. Obviously, there's a bunch of factors. You've got a classic close out type of game, right. Kyrie straight up said it in his shoot around before
the game. He's like, tonight's their super Bowl for us, it's just another basketball game, which, by the way, that's not necessarily the attitude you want to project before the game, but that said, like that's the truth. Like Minnesota is desperate, Dallas has four chances to get this one game right. Obviously, the Derek Lively injury, Carl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards, they are both coming off of a really rough first
three games of the series. So those two guys, they got their pride on the line in a lot of different ways, and they just bounced back tonight. And so again I want to give Minnesota credit. I thought they just outplayed Dallas, and I thought they deserved to win. That there was a key adjustment that we saw in this game that I thought was fascinating. Minnesota decides to put Jaden McDaniels on Kyrie Irving and move Anthony Edwards over onto Luka Doncic. I like this for a couple
of different reasons. Right Like, in the big picture, you don't love the idea of Ant on Luca because Ant's defensive effort has been somewhat inconsistent in this postseason run, even on the ball right and early in this series, a lot of Kyrie getting off was Ant just not doing a very good job. But the desperation of the situation actually brought Ant's best defensive game of the series
out on Luca. One of the nice things with Ant he has a little bit more strength and a little bit more quickness in short bursts of movement to be able to recover against against Luca when he's working in ball screens and then the major pieces. Jaden McDaniels is an entirely different level of perimeter defender than Anthony Edwards in terms of total commitment for forty eight minutes and a lot of length on Kyrie Irving in a weird way. I look at it like this, even moving forward to
game five. I like this matchup because do I expect Aunt to have the same level of impact on Luca in Game five that he did in Game four? No, I think Luca will have a big bounce back game in game five. That said, Jaden McDaniels on Kyrie Irving is really a tough matchup. That's a matchup that Kyrie might struggle with continuing forward in the series, we will see.
I thought that, like, look at it from the perspective of, like, if you can't cut off like the head of the snake, if you can somehow cut off the second most important piece of the team, right, like if you can somehow minimize Kyrie realizing that Jaden can't guard Luca anyway, So even a bad defensive effort from Ant isn't going to have that much of a different impact on Luca than Jaden McDaniel's trying his ass off, right, because Luca just
throws Jayden around like a rag doll. Right. So I kind of liked that idea from the standpoint of, like, put your defensive specialist on a guy he can actually make strugg a little bit, and then put in a situation where if he struggles, it's the same struggles that you were having with your primary perimeter defender. Anyway, I liked that adjustment. I think they should continue that forward
into Game five. The big bounce back game from Karl Anthony Towns took more of an inside out approach, was really attacking the basket early, just kind of putting his head down getting to the rim. Hit that little bank shot driving towards his left hand side against PJ Washington early in the game. That kind of set the tone a little bit. He didn't even attempt a three point shot until the second half and then got red hot. Really impressively too, considering he was in foul trouble most
of the night. Classic Karl Anthony Towns doing stupid shit to get into foul trouble, but he persisted through that and hit a bunch of big shots. Anthony Edwards another big bounce back game from him again. I thought he was really good on defense against Luka Dancic for the most part, and then the big thing from him in this game was hitting all of those pull up jump shots that he was hitting in pick and roll again, Like you guys, everyone's talking about, Oh, Derek Lively, he's
out of the game, there's no rim protection. That's not true. You just scaled up Daniel Gafford's minutes. He played thirty one minutes. Maxi Kliba played what thirteen minutes in this game and he was plus two. So, like you got Kaleba back and you scaled up Gafford's minutes, there were still quite a bit of elite defensive personnel on the
back line. Do you guys remember that play where Aunt beat Derek Jones Junior off the dribble and elevated right into Gafford's chest and Gafford walled him up and he just kind of tried to wiggle around and he couldn't finish. Like, there's still elite rim protection there. Daniel Gafford blocked Karl Anthony Towns twice in that second half stretch, right, So,
like they still have rim protection in there. And the reality is is even regardless of whether Lively comes back in game five, or if it comes back in game six, or he doesn't come back at all, there's just a
lot of rim protection in there. And so what's happening is as Lucas getting past the first layer of the defense, there's an opportunity for him to have some success in that mid range and specifically because of the go bear problem and the fact that he can't catch or finish anything around the basket unless it's a wide open and dunk. Because of that, you need to be able to make those little mid range jump shots and pretty consistently in this game, and was able to get to those spots
and knock him down again. He made seven jump shots between pull up threes and pull up twos in this game. I thought that that was, you know, kind of like the missing piece for him with this particular roster. Now, ideally in the big picture, we'll get to that in the offseason. I don't love the idea of Anthony Edwards needing to make pull up jump shots in order to have success because he's got a stonehand center that can't
catch and finish anything around the basket. But with this particular roster, that's just what he's gonna have to do. And so again, Carl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards, we'll see. I don't think it's gonna be enough. We're gonna talk about it in a minute, I still feel very confident that Dallas is gonna win this series. But like again, this was a big bounce back game and persistently throughout this playoff. R and I talked about this in our
mail bag this morning. I've been pretty consistently impressed with Anthony Edwards and how he's managed to kind of confront his weaknesses over the course of this playoff run and have some success in spite of those weaknesses. Typically we see players have to have multiple playoff runs where they struggle, or multiple off seasons to work on specific things. And ant keeps like running into that brick wall, but then like just continuing try to force his way through and
having some success. And again I don't think it'll be enough to turn the series around, but I was really impressed by the bounce back performance from Ant and from Karl Anthony Towns Tonight. One other guy I wanted to shout out for the Wolves, Kyle Anderson that more defense on Luca. He's another guy that kind of had He's like a bigger, stronger version of Jaden McDaniels in the sense that like he actually can absorb some of those blows from Luca and actually has the length to bother
him on his pull up jump shot a little bit. Now. He has some issues on the offensive end of the floor, as we have talked about at nauseum over the course of the season, but he was actually really active off the ball in tonight's game, which allowed him to remain at positive on the offensive end. Really good screen he freed up Karl Anthony Towns a few times for threes. Was smart screening. He had three offensive rebounds. Was obviously super impactful on the defensive end of the Florida at
three steals in this game. A bunch of really good contests on Luka Doncic. Really nice game from Kyle Anderson. Big bounce back win for the Minnesota Timberwolves. So looking forward to Game five, you know, I was talking with our production staff because we obviously were I thought Dallas was gonna get it done tonight. So shout out to Minnesota for getting it done or for extending the series. But like we were talking, we were just kind of joking.
We're like, oh, we we were expecting to have Thursday night off and have this like magical eight days off before the NBA Finals, which obviously for myself and for the team here at hoops tonight. It would have been very nice because we've been going like absolutely insane for
the last two months. Right. But like you know, Paul, our lead producer, he goes, He's like, oh yeah, I think Minnesota might kill him in Game five, And you know, I kind of feel the opposite about that, Like I think Game five is going to be another crazy close game that kind of ends up around one hundred to one hundred with a few minutes left, and I think it's gonna come down to shot making. Because here's the
thing I keep talking about. You know, remember that the bit that I did before the earlier in the series where I was like, momentum is only as good as whatever your matchup advantages are in the next series. That's kind of the way I look at the idea of Dallas's rim protection. It's like the cliche like momentum is only as good as the next game starting pitcher in baseball, Like it doesn't matter how good you feel, how stoked you are, whether or not you're on the home at
home or on the road. If that dude's you know, a two seamer and slider is flummixing all your hitters and nobody can get on base, like it just doesn't matter if nobody can actually hit the pitches that are being thrown. And that's kind of the way I look at Game five, like the problems still there. It's still there that every single time Anthony Edwards comes off a ball screen, the pain is completely packed every single time just drives by his man in Iso because Go Bear
can't catch or finish anything. It's just Gafford or Lively just standing right under the basket waiting for him. There. That problem's not going away. And again I talked about it earlier. I do think Jaden McDaniels could have some continued success against Kyrie. But I do think that Luca will have a big bounce back offensive game in Game five on the road in Minnesota. So I expect Game
five to be very close. And the bottom line is in order for Minnesota to win this series, they have to win on Thursday in Minnesota, then go back on the road to Dallas on Saturday and they have to win again, and then they have to come home and close them out in Game seven at home on Monday, when they've already lost two games at home to Dallas and every single one of these games has more or
less been the same kind of pathway. I actually thought Minnesota outplayed Dallas tonight, but in the other games they still managed through attacking the offensive glass, through just making a lot of jump shots, Minnesota mana to kind of hang close. But the same problem persists in these late game environments. Is gonna have to make pull up jump shots.
Karl Anthony Towns is gonna have to make contested threes, whereas on the other end of the floor you have professional over the top shot makers and Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic and Luca just seems to be able to manipulate the defense to get wide open threes for guys like PJ. Washington in the corner and easy lob dunks for guys like Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively. It just seems in the aggregate easier for Dallas to generate quality shots in a half court than Minnesota. And so again
it's out there. If they go home in Game five and it's a close game and ant makes two or three more huge clutch pull up jump shots, then they and Luca happens to miss a couple, then yeah, they have a chance to win that game. But do I see that happening in Game five and then again in Game six on the road, and then by the way game six, you're gonna feel a bit of desperation because, like Kyrie said, just another basketball game in game four.
If Dallas loses Game five in Minnesota, you bet your ass Dallas is gonna come out ready to play incredibly desperate basketball in Game six at home, and so, like shout out to Minnesota, big bounce back game. But I still feel very confident that Dallas is gonna get this done. I think they have at least a coin flip chance to get it done on Thursday. And I would just be very very surprised if Minnesota was able to go on the road on Saturday night and win in Dallas.
And so sticking with Dallas is my prediction. But I just I just want to tip the cap to Minnesota. It was a big, big back against the wall, gutsy performance from them to extend the series. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. I'm gonna be
back tomorrow morning. We're gonna do a film session. We'll dig a little bit further into the basically my goal for tomorrow morning is to rewatch the game and try to identify anything that is sustainable from Minnesota going on the road, Because if you're gonna win this series, if you're gonna win three three additional games in a row, you better have flipped the script on some key advantages for your team that you can replicate on a night in, night out basis. And so I'm gonna be digging in
the film to try to find something like that. So keep an eye on the feeds. Tomorrow we'll have a film session and then we'll get back into it on Thursday night for Game five. I will see you guys. Then the volume