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guys have had a great weekend. Well, the Dallas Mavericks have gone up three to zero on the Minnesota Timberwolves in a game that kind of felt just like every other game in this series has felt to this.
Point, some few different factors.
Dallas shoots a little bit better, Anthony Everigs plays a little bit better, but the same basic dynamic takes place, and Dallas pulls away late and crunch time, he gets a win to go up three to zer. We're gonna break it down from the perspective of both teams. You guys said the drop before we get started. Subscribed to the Hoops and I YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTS.
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the postseason. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this series is actually a kind of reminds me a little bit of some of those Lakers Nugget series where it just feels like no matter how hard Minnesota plays, no matter how hard the Lakers play, the same base issues rise to the surface eventually at some point over the course of the game, and they all seem to end the exact same way, and it's like Minnesota just scrounging all these different ways to stay in the game.
But when it push, when push comes.
To shove, Dallas is just a much better half court team. And when they get into these slow down situations, when they get stuck into the half court and it becomes about execution, Dallas is just better. Did anybody think when it was one o four, one oh four that Minnesota was gonna win that game? Of all of the close playoff series, and I'm not talking about these Boston ones
where they're playing against mostly bad or injured teams. Like among the relatively evenly matched series, this one has felt the most inevitable to me by far, because the basic issues that plague Minnesota and the advantages that that Dallas has, they are not things that Minnesota can counter. It would require just bizarre shot making in order to lift Minnesota over the top in these slow down half court environments,
and it's just unlikely. It's not that it's impossible, it's just highly unlikely, and it's certainly unlikely given the fact that they now have to do it four consecutive times after tonight Tonight. According to Cleaning the Glass, Dallas gets one hundred and twenty points per one hundred half court plays. Minnesota gets one oh two point three, So that's an eighteen point per one hundred play gap. Game two is one hundred to ninety six point seven in favor of Dallas.
Game one one oh three point three to eighty three point five in favor of Dallas, yet again a twenty point gap. It has been a chasm between these two teams in terms of actually executing against a set and loaded up defense. I shared some of the ISO stats for you guys after Game two, but they're like shocking. When the teams take a shot out of ISO. Game one one point six to zero point five points per
possession in favor of Dallas. Game two, one point five to zero point three points per possession in favor of Dallas. One point two to one point zero. Tonight in favor of Dallas in Game three. So Minnesota finally had their best ISO game of the series in terms of shooting out of ISO, and it was beneath where Dallas has been in all three games. And that really is wherever
where this all comes down to. Jaden McDaniels is incapable of making Luka Dancich feel uncomfortable, whereas Karl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards both look completely and totally flummixed from the time it was one oh four, one oh four. On the very next possession for Dallas, they go down the floor, we have a huge defensive breakdown from Ant.
He's on the weak side, PJ Washington's in the corner, and I want to say, Kyrie Irving was on the left wing, and Luca's dribbling the ball at the top of the key and Ant inexplicably for no particular reason and just sinks all the way down underneath the basket. Luca just throws a simple swing pass to Kyrie, extra pass to PJ. Washington in the corner, and he knocks down the three.
Again.
This is where it comes down to half court decision making. That was the possession where Luca just got rid of the ball. Why, Because he is a half court surgeon. He's looking at what the defense is doing, finding where his advantage is and picking it apart. There is a slow, methodical approach to Luca, which is what makes him one of the best, if not the best, perimeter half court surgeon in the league. You don't need to do anything difficult if you're gonna make that stupid mistake and sink
into the lane and leave a shooter open, especially on PJ. Washington, who from above the break has struggled but has burned you in the corner for threes in this series. He did it in Game one. That was one of the biggest shots of the game. There after that Jada McDaniel's turnover along the baseline, But from there after Dallas went
up one o seven to one oh four. Kyrie and Luca hit three pull up mid range jump shots, tough contested over the top jump shots, and the Timberwolves did not make a single field goal until Anthony Edwards got a lay up in garbage time when they were already down eleven. That's the game, that's all it is. They go, Minnesota goes down, Ant comes off a ball screen. Derek Jones is in his face. There's a big up high.
There's swing passes available, but Aunt either it's just a little bit slow to make the read or can't get the pass on time on target, or Dallas just rotates and chase them off the line. Minnesota does have a weakness in terms of converting spot up possessions. That's been an issue all season long. They were a good catch and shoot team, but they weren't a good like after you chase them off the line type of team. That
was an issue again all season long. There's random co opted possessions where Karl Anthony Towns just takes a pull up three, even though he was zero for six from three to that point. There's a random possession that just gets run through Mike Conley late. This was a team that was a bad half court execution team all season long. They had a one oh four offensive rating in crunch time when the score was within five with less than five minutes left. This has been an issue all season long.
On the other end of the floor, Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic comfortable getting to their It doesn't matter if you have your best perimeter defender on Luca, He's just comfortable there. He loves that matchup. Had Jada McDaniel so frustrated. He was just committing silly fowls all night as well, And like what was crazy is Jaden got really good contests on both of those last two the fadeaway towards the middle of the floor and then the fadeaway on
the right side on the right elbow, great contests. It just doesn't matter. Those are shots that Luca works on and again, like he just doesn't The big thing I talk about all the time with fadaway jump shooting, you want to disrupt the base. You're trying to disrupt the legs so they don't get the lift that they need to knock down the shot. Lou Dort was able to
bother Luca more there than Jada McDaniel's. Its right, And like that, honestly, if there's something to look back as we go, look back at this series as a whole, and like how favored Minnesota was. Minnesota was, like I want to say, they were like a minus one ninety favorite going into the series. A lot of people picked them.
I picked them myself. Coming into the series. I saw tweet, I had a tweet that somebody put I want to say it was in a mail bag, might have been in a mailbag, It might even just spend a YouTube comment. But somebody said something really fascinating. They just said, this series is a great reminder that every single matchup should
be approached in a vacuum. And I thought that was super profound, because this is such an interesting example of like you watch Minnesota just beat the living shit out of a super team and with Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and Devin Booker and like literally just manhandle him for
four straight games and get him out here quickly. Then you see them like eliminate the defending champion and the team that has the player that most people think is the best player in the world at this point, and like goes toe to toe with him and they win, right, And then you come into this series and all of a sudden they look completely incapable of dealing with the
Dallas problem. And again, that's where it comes down to the matchup elements, right, Like, in the same way that in the same way that Minnesota is constructed to beat a team like Denver because they have long defenders like Anthony Edwards and Jae mcdanie to put on Jamal Murray, who all of a sudden looks small when he gets a defender on his backside in ball screens, or the size on the front line with Karl Anthony Towns and Nas Red, you know, banging bodies with Luka Doncic and
Rudy Gobert hunting on the back line. All of that stuff was excellent for that specific matchup. But then you get into this matchup and it's the exact same kind of thing in favor of Dallas. Like Jaden McDaniels and
Anthony Edwards on Luka doncicch they're just too small. If he puts them in jail, he can comfortably operate in the middle of the floor and protect the basketball and manipulate the rim protector in the low man until he finds whatever opening he wants to attack rim protection versus Anthony Edwards, Nikola Jokic and Yusuf Nurkicic just could not protect the rim. It was just going right around and
through those guys all series long. He's attempting over seven shots in the restricted area per game in the Denver series. Right like now you put him against some real athletic rim protection. Suddenly this is a young twenty two year old downhill athlete that's going up against other young athletic bigs, and all of a sudden, he looks like he's struggling there, right, Luca and Rudy Gobert, Right, Like, Luca's just done a really good job of taking one of the strengths of
Minnesota's defense, their ability to protect the rim. He has just manipulated the hell out of Go Bear all series long. He just has had no idea where to go. Guess the ball handler, guess the role man, whatever it is. He's been lost. And then even just Derek Jones Junior as an on ball defender against Anthony Edwards. Anthony Edwards is a top tier perimeter athlete, like the best perimater athlete we've seen in the league since Dwayne Wade as
a primary ball handler. And here's the thing. KCP couldn't hang with that. The Bradley Beal couldn't hang with that. Roy O'Neil couldn't hang with that. But Derek Jones Junior, Go look up some tape of him playing in collegeen in high school. Go look at his best dunks as a pro in the NBA. Watched him in the way he moves around on the basketball court. He is a Tier one NBA athlete and the dude is playing by the way, he's on a veteran minimum contract this year.
It's going to be one of the biggest wrinkles for Dallas into this offseason because if I'm not mistaken, if I know the CBA properly, I don't think they're gonna be able to offer him more than their their mid level exception. Right, So we'll see if they can keep him. But he's playing at the level of a player deserves to make about fifteen million a year because he's been one of the best perimeter defenders in this postseason run.
And so that's the thing is like Dallas just is constructed at the point of attack and at the rim on their defensive side of things and on the offensive side of things, with the perfect complimentary corner three point shooters and vertical spacers for Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving and Lucas size to deal with some of the length that Minnesota has on the perimeter. It's just a nightmare matchup and it's something that it's something that Minnesota can't
hang with and so I find that really fascinating. Going back to that tweeter, that comment that I received, Like, that's a big lesson that I've learned in this postseason run, is like, don't get caught up in the momentum of any individual team, because momentum is only as strong as whatever your advantages are in the next series. It's really that simple, and we got to keep that in mind when we get to the NBA Finals. I'm not making
any NBA Finals pick today. Both series are three to zero, so God knows we're gonna be able to take our sweet time working through series preview content and I plan on going crazy. We're gonna go through the regular season games, We're gonna do deep dive film study, We're gonna do it all to get prepared for that series. But we got to keep that in mind for the finals. It doesn't matter how hot Boston is or how hot Dallas is.
It's gonna come down to the matchups. How does this guy fair against this guy, How does this scheme fair against this player's strengths and weaknesses. That is going to be what determines the NBA Finals when we get there, one of the things I thought was super fascinating in this particular game, and I thought was a great example of the dynamic that I taught talked about after game
one and two. If you guys remember I tweeted out during Game two and I talked about after the game, no matter what had happened in that game, even if Naserit had hit his shot or if Luca had missed his, I would have picked Dallas to win the series. I thought that the half court dynamic that I just explained at nauseum there for a minute, I thought that dynamic wasn't going away, and I didn't think that that was
something Minnesota could solve. And I also thought the gap was much wider than it looked, even though both of those games came down to a couple of crunch time shots from Luka Doncic, I thought Dallas dramatically outplayed Minnesota and every single phase of the game except for jump shooting.
I read the jump shooting numbers in the last show, but like massive gaps and jump shot performance in both games, and that honestly masked and hid just how big of a chasm there was between these two teams in terms of half court execution. So what's fascinating about that is Minnesota actually played a lot better tonight in a lot of different ways. They made one adjustment. They put Mike Connelly on on Kyrie Irving to try to save Ant's legs.
I didn't like that strategy simply because Ant is a pretty bad off ball defender, and that ended up burning them late in the game when he was on PJ.
Washington.
We'll get into that in a little bit more detail when we talk about Aunt, but that it did have some upside in that Aunt had just a little bit more energy to continue to attack the rim downhill and certainly looked more aggressive in this game than he has all series to this point. They won the rebounding battle, they got killed on the glass the first two games. They won the turnover battle. They protected the paint way better. They got demolished in the paint in the first two games.
It was they allowed fifty four points in game two, sixty two points in game three. They held Dallas to just forty points in the paint in this game. Specifically, from our film session, if you guys remember the film session I did yesterday, I talked a lot about Karl Anthony Towns and the other guys nas reading Karl Anthony Towns mostly as low men being way too preoccupied with
corner three point shooting and leaving dunkers open. And again, like Dallas shot fifty percent from three tonight, Guess how much fifty percent from three ranks on a points per possession basis, It's one point five. Guess how much a wide open unk is worth two points every single damn time. If you have your screen defender up at the level of the screen and the roller gets behind him and you don't tag him, it's a seven foot athlete going downhill.
He's gonna dunk it every single time. There's no variants there. That's just a bucket. And they just did a much better job tonight tagging the roller and making those kickout passes to the corner. But it didn't matter. It didn't matter because Dallas finally had some of the jump shooting flip their way. As they shoot fifty percent from three, they go fourteen for twenty eight overall. As a team.
PJ.
Washington and Derek Jones Junior were five for nine from the three point line. Josh Green came in and hit a big one it just the shooting swung back towards Dallas, and so it didn't even matter that Minnesota did some things better, because again, once we peel back the layers here underneath the shooting variants, Dallas was out playing Minnesota
by a wide margin. So even when Minnesota managed to close the gap a little bit, Dallas got a little bit of shooting support and they get their most convincing win of the series to this point. I even thought Aunt had a much better offensive game. I know the numbers don't really show it, but I thought he attacked in a much smarter way in this game. A lot of Iso drives like I talked about in her film sessions, like forget about the ball screen, just beat your man
off the dribble and make kickout Raids. Did a really nice job with that. Generated a lot of quality shots tonight. I think he had eight assists, had his most aggressive downhill finish of the series to this point. They cleared the side for him, ran him off of a little iverson cut, which is basically just you cut from one side of the floor to the other. There's usually a screen around the elbow to try to get a little bit of separation. And then you just looked to attack
off the catch. It's an action that Alan Iverson used to use a lot when he was with the Sixers. But they ran that on a cleared side of the floor, and I think it was Josh Green was on him. He was chasing over the top, so when Aunt caught, he just quick ripped towards the baseline, got good separation. Gafford was just a step late, and Aunt just absolutely
jammed on him right. Lots of really good stuff from Minnesota that they didn't do in the first two games, but it just didn't matter because they were lucky to even be in those games with as poorly as they were playing. Some of the variants went the other way, and then Dallas ended up getting the win tonight. So like you know, makeup, make up, make no mistake, Like there's no sort of of of adjustment that Minnesota can make.
There's no sort of shooting result that can hide the fact that Dallas is just a better half court team than Minnesota. And no matter what happens, even if Minnesota comes out just plays a really tough defensive game, they're probably gonna end up in a game that's about one hundred to one hundred ish with about five minutes left, and it's gonna be the same damn problem, and and Kat don't know what to do. Luca and Kyrie know
exactly what to do, and that's the bottom line. Like Luca is a top tier superstar who's playing like the best player in the world, Anthony Edwards is a guy that has that potential. But at twenty two years old, it's obvious, especially after this series in a different matchup, that he needs considerably more time to get to that point.
Because again, like one of the things we talk about, like versatility is the is the hallmark of a top tier superstar, being able to succeed against different coverages, being able to succeed against different types of players, and ant he showed through two matchups that he's capable of playing at that level, but he was he could not keep up that level of play against a different matchup that
targeted and exposed some more of his weaknesses. Whereas here we are with Luca and he's had some struggles in this postseason run, but he's he was able to get through those struggles and now he's in a more favorable matchup and he's barbecuing these guys, and it's a huge problem. Kyrie playing his best playoff basketball since he was hooping in the finals alongside Lebron James like again, like just
a perfect role for him once again. Came in in that fourth quarter stretch just started poortne Khill, Alexander Walker.
He looked helpless out there.
And the flailing he was doing to try to get contests on Kyrie IRV and it just was having absolutely no success.
Like it's just you know, they were.
Talking about them as the best offensive backcourt in the history of the NBA. I need to look at that over the summer and really consider all of the other options, but they're sure as hell playing at it like that right now. Last guy wanted to shout out Daniel Gafford.
He gets a lot of slander from MAVs fans, surprisingly, at least from what I've noticed, and I think it's just like it's because Lively is better than him, and I get that, and Lively probably is better than him, but Gafford brings a lot to the table in terms of his athleticism and strength, and I thought he made several huge plays down the stretch of this game, protecting the rim and rolling hard to the rim in ball screens and like he just has that timing down and
pick and roll with Luca. It was cool to see him have that moment after he kind of struggled. If you guys remember when Lively went down, he was not good in that third quarter stretch and it got a little ugly. You could tell he was a little frustrated, and honestly like having him to have that moment where he got to kind of scream and yell and kind of celebrate a little bit that I thought was a really cool moment for Daniel Gafford, a big bounce back
fourth quarter from him. The Derek Lively news looks like he's sprained his neck. That was a nasty hit that he took on that knee from Karl Anthony Towns. Here's the thing, it's bad news, but you can absolutely win the series without him, and if you win on Tuesday, you'll get eight full days off before the NBA Finals. So like, if something like this had to happen, it's not the worst timing in the world. But hopefully Derek Lively is okay and there's not anything more serious going
on before we get out of here. I want to talk a little bit about Anthony Edwards. I feel like we've learned a lot about him in this playoff run. For instance, like if you don't have a top tier athlete on the perimeter and you can't protect the rim, forget about it. He's just gonna kill you. He's gonna cut you to pieces, right, But I think the weaknesses
have been made clear in this particular round. And then a little bit towards the end of the Denver Series one, he struggles to pick up hard a loaded up defense, So like when you throw consistent doubles at him, are consistent in ball screens, he doesn't really know how to attack that yet, and so it'll take work for him to kind of learn how to be more methodical in those situations to find the kill pass, meaning the pass that beats the coverage, not the pass that just gets
rid of the basketball. Specifically in ball screens, when he faces that high drop with the low tag, that means defending three on two essentially schematically, when it comes over the screen, the defender chases him. The screen defender's waiting for him right when he gets off the screen, and even when Go Bear rolls, they have a third defender tagging and so they're fully loaded up on him in those situations. That's the same coverage Minnesota has used in
large portions of the series against Luca. What you have to do is do what Luca did. Come over the top of the screen, put the defender in jail, get him trapped on your backside. As go bear rolls, the screen defender will kind of roll back with him. You methodically work downhill, and then you have a three on two. The three on two is your ability to make that mid range shot, the little floater as the defender's trapped on your backside, the role man going downhill, and the
shooter in the corner. It is a three on two because you have the screen defender in front of you and you have the low man, and you are basically manipulating those two. If they stay glued to the roller into the a week side shooter, that's when you got to take that little floater in the lane right, or do what Luca does and sometimes yank a pullback dribble as the guy's chasing behind you so that he gets back in front, and then shoot a little mid range jump shot right. Or if they come up to you
and tag the roller, it's the skip pass. If they come up to you and they don't tag the roller, it's the lob pass. It's all those little reads working more methodically in ball screens that Ant's going to have to get a lot better at over the years. Secondly,
passes on time and on target. How many times in this series have you seen Aunt make the right read, but the pass is like a like a little bit off target or like a high lob, so the defense can rotate again when you One of the things that lucas amazing at is that pass is always hitting the shooter right in the shooting pocket. So like, even if you're actually set up to rotate, there's just less time for you to get out there because the shooter can
go right up with it off of the catch. If you throw that pass off target, he has another couple of seconds while you're gathering and getting into your shooting pocket to get and close out and chase you off of the line. So like being more diligent and deliberate about making sure those passes get there on target. And then lastly, on the defensive end of the floor, I thought he's been mostly bad outside of some specific responsibilities
some on an Island Iso defense. I thought he did a really good job funneling on Jamal Murray in the second half of Game seven against Denver. But like a lot of his screen navigation has been bad in all serieses all series. Excuse me and his off ball awareness in particular, just anytime he's not like actively engaged on the ball, he tends to relax, get out of a defensive stance and kind of just meander into the lane. He got burned in a big way tonight on that
with the PJ. Washington corner three and so like in general, those are all things that are going to take time. The defense stuff, it comes down to two things for me, scar tissue. What I refer to that as is like you need to lose and have it be painful so that you realize just how important it is to be so locked in on the defensive end of the floor. Like I think this will hurt Ant to be eliminated in the conference finals and to play very.
Poorly doing so. He's gonna understand.
I'm sure that a lot of his mistakes have been called out in film sessions or that he's been made aware in some way, shape or form, he's going to look back at that and be like, man, like I let my team down. I got to get better in that way. Maybe it'll require him losing a few more times. Maybe when he's twenty five years old, he'll lose a big conference finals series, and then finally he'll be like, I have to get better at these specific things. The
second piece of it is conditioning. You can tell that that's an area where Aunt tries to save energy right now. And look, I get it when it's an old guy. I get it when you're in your mid to late thirties and you're trying to conserve energy. But all of the all time grates, all of the all time greats, Kobe Lebron, Michael Jordan, those are literally the three best perimitive players in the history of the league.
In my opinion.
All three of those guys had runs where they made all defense year after year, and they did it because they did it while being the primary offensive initiator for their team. That is a level that he has to get at. Get two if he wants to be regarded on the same level of those guys all time. He has to be willing and capable physically of committing himself
to both ends of the floor. I still feel very strongly that there is a player in there that can reach the level that Luca and Nicole Yokich are on right now, I think, and has that potential. He's just
gonna need more time. And this is very valuable experience playing against a really bad matchup for him Like this, this goes a long way towards towards him him, like learning about what it's like when you get to these stages again, Like he's gonna know forever now that no matter what happens, no matter how good he looks in one round, no matter how good of a regular season he has, He's gonna know eventually, I'm going to run
into sometime over a four round stretch. I'm going to run into a team that has an athlete on the perimeter that can kind of hang with me and rim protection to funnel me into. How am I going to
solve that problem? That is the problem that every single great player has to solve, right, Kobe had to learn how to manipulate defenses with the past Lebron James, like the two thousand and seven Spurs and the two thousand and eight Celtics, both really sagged off of him and packed the paint and he had to learn how to consistently knock down jump shots. That became a problem again in twenty eleven as well, as they've played a lot of two big lineups and the paint was packed against Dallas.
A lot of his post footwork and bullyball game had to be refined. He had to encounter teams that exposed his weaknesses and humiliated him for him to learn how to polish up those specific weaknesses. These are all part of the journey, right and so like I'm still a big believer in Aunt, my opinion on it and his potential has changed zero over the course of this series. However, I think that Dallas has revealed that he has a little bit longer to go to get to that point
than maybe we thought after that Denver series. All right, guys, that is all I have for tonight. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting the show. We're going to be back tomorrow morning with a little film session on this particular game, probably a mail bag as well. As a matter of fact, I've been doing the mailbags from Twitter. Why don't you guys drop the mailbag questions in this video and I'll use this particular videos comments to do the mail bag tomorrow.
I will see you guys. Then the volume