**Full clip from his appearance on the Bill Simmons Podcast here** – https://youtu.be/sbjKB2W0f5s?si=XiQIrEBKI-ExvfGe&t=359 (question and quote above is around the 6 minute mark)
Rivers also says *”I would imagine [Minnesota] are gonna start the two bigs and then immediately one of them will come out so they can stagger them. Put one of them in the second unit because the floor just has to be more clear for [Edwards]. He couldn’t get to the basket. We talked about his free throw attempts or lack of, a lot of that just has to do with lack of spacing or lack of shooting.”*
Rivers on Towns: *”He has to be better at playing the 4 (PF). He wanted to play the 4 last year then when he did he would go call for the ball in the post. That’s not what the 4 does. That adjustment… I think Karl will be a lot better this year.”*
by mr_purrfect
12 Comments
Ant developing a floater and learning to work with the bigs for lobs would fix a lot. James Harden was unstoppable once he became the lob passer that he did in Houston, I think that’s the player Ant should try and emulate.
The Rudy trade is still such a head scratcher to me. I love Minnesota Mike, but we needed a star PG – not a center. Hindsight is 20/20, but imagine keeping Kessler and nabbing Dejounte instead of going all in on Rudy? Murray had a down year and still put up 20/5/6.
Ant averaged a full shot attempt at the rim this season more than last season and that jumped again in the playoffs. Ant had 0 trouble with the 2 bigs setup. Ant got double teamed more when he was playing alongside dogshit perimeter players like Austin “I’m an elite scorer” Rivers.
don’t really agree with any of rivers takes here. almost feels like he just tryna kiss up to ant a bit.
Here’s the thing – KAT and Gobert are both hyper-efficient at scoring in their own ways. KAT and Edwards are both some of the NBA’s best shooters, while Gobert and Edwards are both great at close shots.
Edwards needs to realise his most important ability now isn’t his scoring, it’s his ability to make defenders make difficult choices. We know he can score over two defenders, but that’s a tough shot to take. If he’s drawn two defenders, then someone’s free on the court.
The issue wasn’t who was on the court. The issue was that Ant *really* struggled with passing out of double teams, even when Gobert was wide-open on rim runs.
I think the double-teams were less about two bigs and more about limited offensive talent around him when KAT was out.
You have KAT on the floor, and Ant isn’t getting doubled the same way he was mid season last year. When Ant was playing with Rivers-Jaden-SloMo-Rudy teams could pretty reliably double because no one else could *quickly* beat you.
It’s on Ant to learn how to work with the two bigs as much as it’s on them to work with Ant. Don’t appreciate Rivers seemingly try to tear them apart like that
This sub is wild if you don’t think that a lack of spacing hurts Ant on offense. A lack of spacing hurts anyone on offense. On top of that Ant is an awful lon thrower. Rudy gobert can do really only one thing well on offense and that is being a lob threat. Now you can say that Ant just needs to be a better playmaker and lob thrower. Sure but acting like hey I just want to improve at these major things that I am not great at and now in one year I’m going to excel seems pretty unlikely.
On Towns not playing like a 4 he didn’t do it in the limited time last year. People are going to have to make sacrifices and Towns needs to spend time in the corner spacing the floor. We need people to make sacrifices in their game in certain lineups and stop trying to do so much. Finch himself says we need to be a more structured team and that’s part of it.
Ant did a very poor job of adjusting to life with Rudy. He wouldn’t have struggled so much if he would have passed the ball to him more efficiently in the pick and roll. A lot of that was on ANT. The odd thing was KAT had more assists to Rudy than ANT did which to me is one of the areas in which ANT must improve if he is going to be as good as we all hope.
Rivers really almost went down the same Pat Bev path with speculating on whether Ant will be with the Wolves for long considering his rising star but Simmons cut him off. Lmao. Shit is getting so fucking old
Overly simplistic. He makes extremely poor use of the screens he gets. I felt like he was showing more signs late in the season, but generally he wasn’t reading the defense and making them respect his playmaking. That’s the big issue. Even Gobert alone on the court, he ended up having to do a lot of awkward mid-range jumpers. It’s not the number of bigs that’s the problem, he wants a flat five out offense. But once he starts using his drive to draw defenders and get an angle to dump off the ball inside, then it will look completely different. Rudy was the quintessential big man finisher in the two-man game for a while there. Ant hasn’t got himself involved in hardly any of that yet.
It’s like Harden – he’s excellent playing in a fast, small, five out lineup, but he’s just as dangerous when you give him an elite finisher like Capela. Ant only figured out the former, but not the latter.