The West Playoffs Are Gonna Be Crazy

The West Playoffs Are Gonna Be Crazy

Okay boys let’s talk about the top of the Western Conference a couple weeks ago we did a middle of the West video and in that time the Suns have scored a million points the Rockets have trailed off a little bit the Mavs made two moves the Suns made a move the Pelicans and

Kings remain right there too the Warriors are on a run right now the Lakers have been better in their last like 15 games or above 500 so yeah conference is packed and the round one matchups are probably going to be pretty nuts we’re going to do the top uh no I’m

Not going to do a trade deadline why didn’t trades Happen video I just I don’t know I figure you’ve already probably seen that enough on the internet you don’t need it from me okay I would like to start with the t-wolves who are still fantastic defensively with

My favorite thing that they do on defense being when Rudy will point to someone on the opposing team and be like hey Jaden McDaniels you pick that guy up so I don’t have to worry about him out there and now I can just remain planted

In front of the basket it can be anybody not just jadeen McDaniels of course uh but if we can talk about the Wolves offense which I think is more of the interesting conversation I mean we can definitely appreciate their defense it’s been amazing but as far as like how far

Can they go like the offense is a little more of a conversation to me they 18th in offensive rating on the season that number does improve when you’re talking about just their starting lineup and it’s a thing where depending on the night you catch them you might see

Edwards and goar having great chemistry on the pick and roll one play that sticks out to me recently was against the Bucks where uh just simple Rudy ants pick and roll he crosses over to his left pulls Brook Lopez out of the paint then he finds Rudy on the roll we love

That or you could see like last night against the Clippers where like cat has teren man on him and so he just immediately relocates to the middle of the floor connley finds him because Conley does everything right and then from there it’s just kind of bully ball

You know I mean they had 33 assists against the Clippers last night however what you could also see if you like took a look at that Bulls game where they collapsed like crazy in the second half and eventually in the overtime Kobe white also went nuclear and then some

From three which was a big deal but the Wolves offense had a really tough time down the stretch of that game the Bulls just turned up the pressure on him it was more aggressive switching it was double teaming more often and you would have these plays where like Conley has

Got two to the ball on on him whether it’s like Drummond or Vu or whoever and then the guy guarding Conley of course and I mean Conley’s very smart but he just can’t get through a defense the way that ant can right like I mean in that

Same stretch ant had one play where he basically scores on the entire Bulls defense for a three-point play that’s not an exaggeration right but then you also had actions where it’s two to the ball on Ant and he’s like making the swing pass to connley but by that time

The Bulls defense is already reset and Rudy was open on the roll for a second you know now they still had some great plays I mean I’m pretty sure the three the cat had to tie the game up before they went to OT you know it was like

That Rudy cat horns action that I love when they do because they can get like seven different things out of that type of play and that is a bit of a running thing for the rest of the season with the wolves like can they get cat like

How many three-pointers do they want cat shooting because this team does need to just get more three-pointers up sometimes but anyway it wasn’t just the Bulls game recently where the offense was a little suspect it was also the Magic game where unfortunately for the Wolves Jonathan Isaac was playing and

That means he’s blocking cats on like a hook shot or he’s getting into a passing Lane when ant is throwing it to cat so that was a little bit of it but also the magic had a couple plays there again where like you just turn up the heat on

The wolves and let’s see what happens you know they put two to the ball on Edwards and then it’s a matter of is it the swing pass which can maybe then lead to something or is it the direct pass to like Rudy on the roll or whatever it is

And I want to be clear I’m not saying that ant is like the secret way to stop the Wolves is like just put two to the ball on Ant like no he will still like make the skip pass to cat or the skip to Jaden or whoever or the rooll to Rudy

But it’s more so when the initial action is taken away from the wolves and sometimes they’ll run like some pin down actions for ant to get catch the ball in the move as well but whether it’s ant whether it’s Conley getting doubled whether it’s cat getting doubled sometimes it’s do the Wolves

Consistently swing the ball enough and do all that to make defenses pay all the time for doing that and I think the answer is it depends sometimes and sometimes you’re just going to see ant and catches make tough shots I mean in that Rockets game they had recently in

The third quarter ant has like 20 something points and I mean not all of them were step back jumpers but a good amount of them were or it was just him taking his guy one-on-one into like a fade away around the free throw line now

In their last two two games ant has had 17 assists in one turnover which I mean throw a parade if he can keep up that sort of pace throughout the rest of the season for the sake of Simplicity if you just wanted to look at one thing to see

The state of the Wolves offense you could just look at turnovers uh for the season they are 28th in turnover percentage as in there are only two teams that are worse than them in this regard now if you would prefer turnovers per game as opposed to turnover percentage well then they’re 26th which

Is still not good anything else before I go on to OKC jayen McDaniels has not had the offensive jump that I thought he was going to he’s still very valuable for them with his defense let’s not get it twisted but still we love Nas Reed’s shooting and what he does off the

Dribble Monte Morris should help Kyle Anderson is just having a weird season like the blueprint for the Wolves is be great on defense and it’s going to be a grind on offense with your top two dudes having to make some tough shots and now we get to OKC and real quick I would

Love for an OKC wolves playoff matchup because I just think there’d be a lot of interesting basketball stuff I mean we’ve already seen the wolves have Rudy help off a Josh Giddy and that’s been a running thing with the Thunder and we’ll talk about that in a second but also how

The Thunder Force a lot of turnovers and a lot of deflections and get a lot of blocks and all that and how the Wolves would deal with that on offense like I think it’d be really interesting but anyway for the Thunder now similar to The Wolves defense I don’t want to harp

Too long on the thing that makes all of these teams great I more so want to get on to the other stuff but still let’s appreciate SGA jdub chit they’re all great and every game now when I’m watching them I see Jay dub getting into what feels like one or two more step

Backs or pull-ups or whatever and I’m just like man like what the hell is Jay dub seeling do this is second season he’s going to average 20 a game uh yeah let’s talk about how teams are guarding Josh giddy real quick so the very large example of it was the recent game

Against the Wolves where Rudy was helping off a Giddy and I mean you don’t need me to tell you how much more challenging that makes it to score on offense for you even with how good SGA is right but then we can look at like their recent one against the Mavs where

Dallas was pretty ruthless with you know Maxi kba helping off of giddy the Lively was not playing in this one but then when Gafford came in the game he would also be helping off Aidy and I mean you’ve got plays where the the pain is

Just so packed that it’s SJ or J dub taking a pull-up as opposed to uh you know getting all the way to the rim which they can make those shots of course but still it’s going to be a little tougher for him a couple times where giddy is left wide open and he’s

Missing a three or he might make one or two threes but even so the defense is usually just kind of unrelenting with doing this right now it doesn’t happen every game like in their recent Kings win uh Harrison Barnes was mostly helping off a giddy I mean it’s just

Different when it’s a Center doing it versus Harrison Barnes doing it you know in the recent Jazz game it was like John Collins helping off and then there was like one possession late where marinan was helping off a Giddy and the Jazz brought two to the ball on jayd dub and

Then it’s a swing to Giddy who misses the three another one where giddy tried to attack and he misses like a floater you know of course the Thunder they can go to Isaiah Joe they can go to um Cas Wallace they just got Hayward who can play in those minutes now if defenses

Are just kind of killing them with the way they don’t guard giddy they have tried some like giddy screening on the ball for s GA which can help sometimes the Thunder just play through this you know like if Chad and SGA have a really good two-man thing going on like you can

Still kind of play through this sometimes but no it’s definitely going to be something that I think we’re going to see a lot in the playoffs you know I think teams are also daring L Dort to beat him as well you know besides that if we talk about OKC’s defense for a bit

So the beauty of Chad there’s many things about Chet that are great but one thing is that it does allow OKC specifically on like pick and roll actions that are going at Chet to not have to be as aggressive as they had to be last year right with this being said

OKC still does up the aggressiveness when they can and I mean it results in them leading the league in deflections and their top of the league in like force turnovers and Steals and blocks and all of this right and when it goes well which is most of the season so far

I mean they just look suffocating defensively like in their recent win against the Pelicans where they forced 20 turnovers and they also had I think like five or six blocks on top of that and I’ll just give you one play where it’s like Ingram is trying to ISO on I

Think it was jdub and then Aaron Wiggins comes over and doubles Brandon Ingram and so then it’s a kick to Dyson Daniels who now is in a one-on-one situation against Chad and he drives and he just could loses the ball and I think as that was happening you had like Jay dub also

Helping again from the wing like going from Ingram then to the to the rim and then of course you have SG who’s fantastic at getting into these passing lanes and K Wallace who’s tough as hell and you know again Chad Rim protection we all understand that one there are a

Lot to deal with defensively the one trade-off to all of this is I mean you know they’re towards the bottom of the league in defensive rebound everybody knows that one that’s what happens when you put a lot of athletes around one big dude in chit and they also give up uh a

Lot of corner threes they give up the most Corner threes in the league which again is why I’m so fascinated in a potential Thunder wolves matchup because it’s like you know with OKC just putting the pressure on the Wolves and the Wolves already having at times problems with that sometimes they look great

Sometimes they don’t just what would happen in a playoff matchup like that you know and then of course just the size difference between the two teams as well next up we’re going to go to the Clippers and I will admit throughout parts of this run that the Clippers have

Been on now which has just been months long at this point they did just have a rough loss to the wolves and also a one not too long ago against the Pelicans as well but throughout this crazy run they’ve been on where Harden has had amazing pick and roll chemistry with

Zubats and Ty or plumbley who’s ever playing you know those Center minutes for him Kawaii and PG I mean especially Kawai just making all of the difficult Kawai mid-range fadeaways and all that that he’s always made uh PG coming across his pin downs and all that Westbrook being good Off the Bench for

Him they have sprinkled in more Westbrook carded minutes as the season has gone on and then defensively man I was watching that Heat game and they were just switching defensively and Miami just had moments of like well we don’t really know what to do cuz they’re switching and we don’t have any driving

Lanes Harden also made a few step back threes on them that were crazy but I have been like okay so what is the like potential weakness of this team well of course there’s the health of kawaii and PG we all know that I do think they

Could have used another forward I I know they got Kawaii and PG Amir coffey’s good Off the Bench and and all this but I the one more forward I think would have been nice and I think you saw it a little bit in their last one against the

Wolves where you’ve got got plays where Norm Powell ends up switching to cat and then cat from there is just going off the dribble basically so I don’t know the other potential thing I guess in a playoff matchup could just be maybe they get a little too IO heavy sometimes but

Even then their tough shot making can go just crazy sometimes uh teams will definitely dare Westbrook to beat him from outside in the playoffs so they’re really good but hey the West is really good I mean there’s a decent chance that three potentially all four of the round

One matchups are all interesting Series in the way and speaking of the Nuggets let’s do them for the last one here so because the nuggets are defending Champions I think it is fair to just say their sense of urgency or whatever is like probably not completely where it

Should be right now let’s just call it what it is like they sometimes just have some weird blowout losses and with that said I’m not concerned at all I think they’re still the best team in the west they might not get the one seed we’ll

Just see how the rest of the year plays out I would love to see if nuggets fans have any sort of fear at all or if they’re also just in the state of like yeah we’re fine if you wanted to pin it down to just one specific thing outside

Of the games where they just lose by like 25 points it’s how do they look in the non- yic minutes if we want to talk about the defense for a little bit because last year that was my big thing with them because that was like the long running conversation was well can they

Be good enough defensively in the playoffs and my thing was always well when they have yic at the level of the screen they look pretty damn good defensively and my thoughts on that are still kind of similar because they’re just good at all the rotations behind it

And stuff but I don’t know it does feel like it’s a little more 50/50 this year just I don’t I have no stats to back this up at all this is just pure eye test could be dead wrong it feels like joic is more 50/50 Dr versus higher up

On screens this year if any of that really matters I don’t know uh as far as just their late game execution and all that like yeah there’s nobody that I would Bank on more to just have an unguardable like three minute stretch in the fourth quarter than these guys

Because of the yic Murray 2-man game and when you think about just other teams guarding them it’s like well sure zubot is a big dude and he’s probably got a better shot than other centers of simply not getting pushed around by joic but that’s kind of where it ends like I do

Not think that zubot would be able to slow down yic on his own because I don’t think anybody can slow down joic on their own at this point the Thunder have beaten the Nuggets three times this year the last one yic didn’t play but the

Other two we saw a mix of things we saw one game where it was Chad or big Jaylen Williams on him and then from there it’s doubling when he gets the ball or when he puts the ball on the floor in the post but then we saw like in another one

Of them where it was more so big jayen Williams on him with Chad being the help guy and we know the Wolves can do that as well it really just comes down to like does any of this actually matter with how good joic is you know probably

The best team in the league like oh you want to throw extra attention at us all right man here you go here’s an open three for mpj or a dunk for Gordon or open kyp shot you know what it is and then of course there’s the you manage to

Do everything right against the nuggets and know Jamal Murray just made a tough shot on you I mean we all get it with Denver man like they’re the favorites they think that’s totally fair I mean like yeah if they could get the one seed instead of like the three seed that

Would be cool for them even so like yeah I’m going to pick them to win every series they get

talking about the top 4 teams in the conference
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