Wolves vs. Nuggets is a Chess Match

Wolves vs. Nuggets is a Chess Match

after losing three straight and looking all but figured out the Timberwolves responded with an overwhelming performance in game six as they made all the right adjustments to give themselves an advantage joic absolutely fried them in game five recording 40 points and 13 assists on 77% true shooting without turning the ball over a single time a lot of those numbers came as a result of going right at Rudy goar while the Wolves left him in single coverage allowing him to get to his spot every single time so on the first play of game six when yic posts up towns ant comes to double from up top while Rudy roams near the paint to play cleanup at the basket they made it clear right away that priority number one was to not let yic get a clean look out of the post all night this time he’s got McDaniels and goar commits to the ball not worried about what happens behind him the first key to limiting yic in the post is making sure cat stays on him and there are two reasons why this is so important first is that it keeps goar away from the ball as a RoR where he can do what he does best as a rim protector second is that cat has a wider base and a stronger lower body so he can bother the MVP a bit more with his physicality in game five jokic was making an effort to get cat switched off of him with the use of screens but instead of conceding the switch you’re going to see cat make a deliberate effort to go under which leaves yic with a ton of space on the perimeter but they’re willing to live with him taking three more times than not these screens are going to be some sort of inverted pick and roll with Aaron Gordon and even if cat gets caught goar sitting back in a more traditional drop coverage as he forces the big man into a travel whenever jic did get the ball in the post whether it was a favorable matchup or not the Wolves were going to send that double from up top basically telling Denver that they’ll let any of the role players beat them with shot making and there’s a lot more going on than just the initial double when ant commits to yic no noce how the rest of the defense shifts one pass over the best way to counter this is with a quick swing pass to the corner but Porter misses it and tries his hand at a pull-up three for reference here’s what it looked like when that extra pass was made the entire defense is Shifting holiday sets a perfect screen and kcp ends up with a wideopen corner three this is the risk when it comes to doubling yic on every touch he’s an all-time great passer so you’ll have to live with plays like this where he skips the second and third pass and finds the corner himself although holiday is unable to knock down the jumper or this one from the third quarter where that double comes from up top he spins away from it on a Baseline Drive and counters the shift by finding Porter on the opposite wing for yet another missed opportunity as I said earlier the Wolves basically told the Nuggets that they would let any of those roll guys beat them with outside shooting and to say that worked out would be an understatement Denver shot 7 of 36 or 19.4% from three which sounds bad but it gets so much worse according to nba.com 31 of those 36 were either considered open or wide open and they made six of them or once again 19.4% if you’re a Denver hopeful I can tell you right now that it’s very unlikely this level of por shooting will be replicated impossible of course not it’s just highly improbable with that said 363s is higher than their season average of 31.2 so in some ways they did sort of play into Minnesota’s scheme and much more alarming was their lack of paint scoring just 36 points in the paint as opposed to their typical average of 49.1 that’s where Rudy goar as a RoR comes in as long as he stays away from joic and the ball he’s basically serving as a free safety behind the defense stepping in front of cuts or drives and knowing that he’ll be there if they get beat the perimeter players are able B to get a lot more aggressive with their Closeouts he had some truly remarkable possessions like this one covering both joic and the ball at the same time enforcing a much lower percentage floater from Christian Brown or this one where he’s matched up with Gordon one-on-one slides his feet to shut off the rim before smothering a mid-range jumper that results in an airball even in the few times he switched on to yic his presence was still felt all over the floor first he steps in front of a potential drive from Porter then he closes es out to the perimeter to get a hand up on the big man only to get attacked off the catch and recover to alter a shot at the basket here’s one where he’s matched up with jic in the post and you still have that double from up top the entire defense is in rotation Porter beats a close out only to run into the four-time defensive player of the year in addition to the sheer presence of goar another way the Wolves shut off the paint was with how they approached the pick and roll for most of the series they’ve been having the big sort of bait towards the ball before getting back to yic and with goar roaming that’s a really effective strategy however when gobear is the one defending the screen it doesn’t work nearly as well because there isn’t a second go bear stepping over to shut off the paint so a big key for them was mixing up the coverage this time you’re going to see Rudy come up to the level in a hedge and it’s cat who’s stepping up to the ball Jamal definitely could have gotten it Gordon on a lob but he instead tries a tougher floater it was the same thing when goar was out of the game cat’s defending the screen and he’s going to play it in an actual drop coverage to protect the paint while Jaden McDaniels absolutely hounds him from behind here’s another one from less than a minute later against Reggie Jackson cat drops back and plays the ball Reed steps over from the corner to put a body in front of jokic and throwing different looks each time is a great way to keep the offense from getting comfortable so let’s just quickly recap some of what I saw the wolves do differently in game six you have the double teams against yic bringing a second Defender from up top and shifting everyone one pass over which forced role players to carry the scoring load unsuccessfully instead of switching on joic as he comes off of screens they went under to keep their matchups letting the big man shoot as many threes as he wanted that kept goar as a RoR for most of the game where he can play to his strengths as one of the most impactful Rim protectors ever against pick and roll they mixed it up depending on who was on the court over playing joic whenever goar was there to clean up and either going to a hedge or a drop in other situations to keep Jamal guessing and while all of those things undoubtedly made a difference the Nuggets definitely shot themselves in the foot in more ways than one if we take it back a few days a huge adjustment that they made in game three was running action towards an open Corner instead of the middle of the floor so that ball handlers could operate in more space and with less help in game six they just completely abandoned that adjustment pretty much everything was run towards the middle and the exact same problem showed up another big adjustment for them in this series primarily in game four was having either Gordon or joic bring the ball up as a point Jamal was really struggling with ball pressure so one of those guys could get it across midcourt and then set up the offense to which the Wolves had no idea what to do in terms of matchups or pressure Gordon imp particular as an initiator is a great way to stretch goar he can’t roam as freely when his man has has the ball up top and they can get into some of the action that makes them such a lethal offense but like I said they abandoned this for the most part and had Jamal playing like a traditional point guard again which Unleashed that Minnesota ball pressure that led the way for a 2 lead in the first place for the most part it was an who was just all over Jamal picking him up full court sticking with him through screens playing physical Jamal couldn’t shake him no matter how much action they got into and that made everything significantly more difficult for him as a Creator it also hurt him away from the ball on this one ant is top locking the handoff so Jamal thinks he has a back door cut only for the P to get deflected into the hands of goar who was ready to protect that Rim as a result of these issues Jamal couldn’t get anything going whatsoever he shot one of 10 in the first half and four of 18 overall some of it was the game being made tougher and he was also missing most of his decent looks just not a good per performance and the same goes for mpj he was three of nine many of those misses being open but he looked completely out of rhythm like on this one where he comes off a screen and has a wide openen three only to instead step into a way worse look from the mid-range when you nullify jokic’s one-on-one scoring role players aren’t hitting threes the number two and number three shot makers can’t throw a rock into the ocean and as a unit they’re shooting themselves in the foot it’s only reasonable able that it’ll lead to some bad offensive results but I’m not sure anyone could have prepared for how bad it actually would be here’s a look at their offensive rating by game in this series after that disaster of a game two they had a ridiculous turnaround with three straight games at historic efficiency in game six they were considerably worse than even game two an offensive rating of 76.1 that alone would be caused for a blowout Minnesota win and in addition to that they made some nice tweaks to their own offense well the main adjustment was just simply getting Mike connley back in the lineup he’s a capable initiator which takes a ton of pressure off of Ant and he poses some interesting threats in the pick and roll for most of the series yic has been playing these in a deep drop but once that pull-up three starts hitting it makes things tough and he trusts goar as a finisher more than anyone else on the roster whenever he’s in the game the offense has so much more variety ant can spot up in the corner and take a play off while turning Denver’s best point of attack Defender into a non-factor and Conley can initiate set action as The Possession ends with a wideopen dunk the most important thing with Conley though is how much he helps ant as a connector when ant draws a double instead of having to make a super Advanced decision he can give the ball up to connley one pass away who can survey the floor and make the decision for him this time he finds McDaniels in the corner for a quick drive off the catch as he takes it to the rim with authority knowing that ant is the biggest threat they can also use him as a decoy to make life easier for Conley notice how yic is worried about the ball and not the flare screen being set which leaves the veteran with a wide openen jumper another way he made life easier for Conley and the first major offensive adjustment was by setting the ball screen the attention that he draws away from the ball clears the lane for a Conley Drive as he patiently works his way into that patented floater you using ant as a screener was a genius way to create matchup problems with Kyle on the ball when joic gets screened from Gordon’s man they’re going to switch except Gordon’s man was ant so now you have the ultimate mismatch as he creates a ton of space for a corner three typically when ant has the ball they like to run a lot of high pick and roll particularly with goar’s screening but throughout this series they’ve really struggled to counter Denver at the level coverage they’ve mastered the art of rotating behind the play and basically force gobear to be the decision maker in these spots which he’ll do correctly every now and then but certainly not with consistency so what happened is ant lost trust and didn’t want to make that shovel pass to Rudy as a result they couldn’t exploit potential four on threes and struggled to create advantages in game six however they didn’t try to come up with a way to counter the coverage instead they basically abandoned the ant pick and roll altogether and allowed him to play one-on-one not a single defender on the Nuggets can contain him off the dribble and they already have weak Rim protection as is but as soon as his man sags off he stepping back into a three that left Denver with one option sending two to the ball right away and that worked in game five but in game six the Wolves came prepared it’s easy to say that the counter is good ball movement and it’s true as long as ant hits the open man with a timely pass the defense will be forced into rotation and from there the supporting guys just have to make good decisions for The Possession to end with a good shot what I was impressed with in this case though was how he used the Escape dribble to make that initial pass possible it’s such a subtle thing but it gets the ball from point A to point B uninterrupted and from there they have the complimentary talent to find a good opportunity like on this one Edwards is expecting the double so he prematurely backs away from the three-point line to create an angle McDaniels and Conley play a little game of Hot Potato from there and Jaden puts his head down on a drive where he forces his way into a pair of free throws speaking of Jaden this was a massive game for him I won’t duck the smoke I was starting to feel like he may have been a potential liability as long as he continued to shoot as poorly and as hesitantly as he was for a majority of the series and he not only responded he absolutely shut that notion down scoring 21 points on 8 of 10 shooting while making countless big plays during their huge first half run good things happen when you’re three primary wings are all performing in the way these guys did Conley with his pick and roll game and ability to either initiate or connect the offense as a way to take pressure off of Edwards an ability to play one-on-one encounter those aggressive double teams by patiently making the right reads as ball movement took care of the rest then Jaden’s ability to knock down shots and play off the catch as a slasher that still doesn’t cover all of Minnesota’s adjustments though another thing that I think stood out was the way they used cat particularly as a post player they did a lot of work early in possessions with cross matches and screens to get cat a mismatch and then they’d run the offense through him which forced the Nuggets into some tough decisions on this one it’s a soft double from up top and that doesn’t phase him as he bullies the smaller kcp for two points in close and when Denver tried their own version of the double from up top then shift post coverage Cat made a beautiful skip pass to put them into rotation which resulted in some easy points for goar down low it wasn’t just cat who benefited from this though when Nas Reed was in the game he too got a fair share of post touches against mismatches which really shows off their versatility as a team and for a cherry on top they absolutely dominated The Possession game with 62 rebounds to Denver’s 43 while basically never turning the ball over when it all comes together well we can do the same game by game graphic of Minn soda’s offensive rating over the series outside of a poor game four they’ve been pretty consistently around the same range in game six was their most efficient performance scoring more than 122 points per 100 so they had both their best offensive and defensive game at the same time which is precisely why they won by 45 points after forcing Michael Mone to empty his bench with 10 minutes left who knows if we’ll see any more adjustments in game seven or if all of the chips have been played and it just comes down to Performance but Denver definitely has some tough questions to answer on both ends of the floor because Minnesota seemingly made every right tweak in an absolutely dominant game six win if you enjoyed this breakdown make sure to drop a like subscribe and turn my post notifications on to be first on more content if you’re interested in my more in-depth research make sure to check out my website and social media profiles you can find those links in the description feel free to let me know down in the comments what you thought of this game as always I hope you all have a great day and I’ll catch you guys in the next one

After losing 3 straight and looking all but figured out, the Timberwolves responded with an overwhelming performance in Game 6.

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