Jason Timpf reacts to Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and the Minnesota Timberwolves' stunning dominance in their Game 2 win over Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and the Denver Nuggets. Just how good is Minnesota? And are the defending-champion Nuggets done? Later, Jason shares his thoughts on Game 1 from Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks' thrilling win over Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers as the NBA Playoffs roll on. #volume
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05:00 - Timberwolves dominate Nuggets
26:30 - Knicks survive Pacers
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welcome to hoop tonight here at the ball. Youme happy Monday, everybody.
I'll ball if you guys are having a great week,
(01:57):
jam pack show for you tonight. The most shocked playoff
game that I can ever remember seeing in my time
as a basketball fan. As the Wolves go up two
to oh in Denver without Rudy Gobert, are gonna break
that game down? And then one of the worst calls
that I've ever seen, probably not the worst, but certainly
on the list, an illegal screen at the end of
the Knicks Pacers game. We're gonna mainly focus on the
(02:18):
basketball there. But I got a little bit of a rant,
not based on that specific call, but just officials in
general around the NBA, because that's becoming a little big,
a little bit of a problem. But a jam packed
night of NBA basketball, we're gonna break it all down.
You guys know the drive before we get started. Subscribe
to a brand of YouTube channel so you don't miss
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(02:40):
Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your
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least keep roping mail back questions in those YouTube comments.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So again, as I
said in the open, I have never been more shocked
by a playoff result than this one. I have the
defending champs in a must win game at home, The
(03:03):
defensive anchor who made many of the biggest plays in
Game one is out for the birth of his child,
and they get the living shit kicked out of them.
Not only that, the Nuggets completely fall apart mentally in
the process. I just can't ever remember. I've seen crazy sequences,
like we saw two of them at the end of
(03:24):
that Sixers Knicks series, right, like a couple games that
get quite literally snatched from you know, victory from the
jaws of defeat, so to speak. I've seen crazy sequences.
I've seen crazy plays. I've never seen a more shocking
playoff result than this one, even like looking back at
like some other ones recently, Like remember when the Phoenix
(03:45):
Suns went into that Game seven against Luca and the
MAVs and they and Luca just made him quit. Like
at least you can look at that and go like, well,
Devin Booker and Chris Paul neither of those guys are
like real superstar level players, and Luka Dancic is there's
a huge, like mental advantage that Luca has. He's just
the best player on the floor by a mile, and
(04:06):
he just went in there and snatched their soul right
Like it wasn't It was a shocking result in the
dynamic that took place in how dramatic it was, but
like you would have been surprised right to think that
Luca could do that to another team. It just doesn't
make sense. Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world.
The Denver Nuggets are the defending champs, and they've shown
(04:27):
championship medal in so many different situations. And I want
to just throw that credit to the Minnesota Timberwolves, because
I in addition to never being more shocked about a
playoff result, I don't think I've ever been more wrong
about a basketball team than I was about the Minnesota Timberwolves.
This was a team that I just took too much
(04:50):
stock in their evidence from the regular season. I focused
too much on how limited their offense was, especially in
late game situations. Too much stock and Ant's age and
whether or not he'd be ready to lead a playoff
run like this, too much stock in some of their
issues closing games in general on both ends of the floor.
I focused way too much on that, and I missed
a simple thing that tilted Minnesota's way, and they took
(05:12):
advantage of it and they're running with it. And that
is when the league, right around halfway through the season,
started to tilt things in terms of officiating more in
the direction of the defense, which is something I think
is great for the game, something that all of us
have been begging for for a long time as that inflated,
offensively minded league was getting a little bit unwatchable at times.
(05:35):
And there's still some remnants of it, like we've seen
some of the officiating over the course of this playoff run,
especially in like grifty stuff, right, there's still some remnants
of it. But the league tilting in that direction was
something that desperately needed to happen in Minnesota, and we
should have seen this coming. To you, Minnesota Timberwolves fans
who saw it coming, kudos to you because I missed it.
(05:55):
But they took advantage of those rule changes, and they've
leaned into it from the opening tip. They're grabbing, they're
holding their hand checking, they're being physical, they're they're top
locking to prevent guys from going on screens. They're picking
up full court, they're pressuring everybody all over the floor.
They're pressuring Yokics full court with nasried half the time.
(06:17):
Like they are leaning into it. They understand what you know,
and this is something that I talk about a lot
with basketball teams, like understand what your advantage is and
lean into it. Don't go away from your advantage, lean
into your advantage. Minnesota knows their advantage is their defensive capability,
their size, their athleticism, and their overall defensive talent. They're
leaning into that and they're reaping the dividends here in
(06:40):
the postseason that I've never been more wrong about a
basketball team. I had a take, probably one of my
worst takes as a basketball analyst, when I said that
the Timberwolves had about the same chance to beat Denver
as La. God, that was stupid. Like, I've never been
more wrong about a team. I'm completely flow, and so
(07:00):
shout out to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Man. I owe them,
I owe them an apology. In addition, they are perfectly
constructed to beat the Denver Nuggets. Like it's honestly kind
of diabolical when you think about it. Like Tim Conley
knows first hand. He must have known that Jokic was coming. Obviously,
(07:22):
he was there for at least one of the MVP
runs if I remember correctly. But like he he had
to have known, and he went into Minnesota and he
constructed a team to beat the Denver Nuggets. And what's
crazy is like everyone was really down on the Rudy
go Bear trade. I was down on it right when
it happened. But I immediately liked it during the season
(07:45):
because I loved that dynamic of the elite perimeter defenders
Anthony Edwards, Jade McDaniels, and Rudy Gobert. But where I
was wrong again there is I was like, okay, but
the two bigs thing is stupid. You gotta trade Carl Towns.
And now in retrospect, I'm watching that late first half
post up where Jokic is posting up Nas Red and
(08:08):
Nas and he goes to his left shoulder hook and
Naz just kind of bullies him off of his spot
and blocks him on a hook shot, and Jokic gets
the ball back and barely gets another one off and
just flings it up at the rim and and Minnesota
gets the rebound and they running the other way. And
I'm like, this is genius. They're constructed to beat Denver.
They have two guys in nas Read and Carl Towns
(08:31):
who are both big and strong enough to flatten out
Jokic's post ups. He can't go through them. And then
when they're healthy, they have already go bear on the
back line. It's like, Jokic, we didn't we didn't put
nearly enough stock in what Jokic was saying after Game one,
I need two of me. You're damn right, because because
Minnesota is literally just layering size and athleticism on that
(08:56):
Denver front line and it's working. It's diabolically stuff from
Tim Conley went into Minnesota and built a roster to
beat the Denver Nuggets. And then you add to that
a tweak in the NBA is officiating that this team
grabbed a hold of, and it's and they're leaning into
their strength and they're running with it. It's so it's
(09:16):
so impressive to me. It really comes down to this,
because of Jada McDaniels and Nikile, Alexander Walker and Anthony Edwards.
They can guard Jamal Murray really well. And we're gonna
get into that in more detail in a minute. That's
not the calf muscle. He's in jail right now. Two,
they can guard Yokic well. So since they can guard
Jamal well, and they can guard Yokic well, and they've
(09:38):
got that two man game under wraps. Now all of
a sudden, it's shining. It's putting a bigger offensive responsibility
on the other players, and it's expecting Contavious call Well,
Pope Michael Porter Junior and Aaron Gordon to shoulder more
of an offensive low. It's just not gonna work. And
so like there they like I again, I will, I
(09:58):
will not declare the the series over because I have
too much respect for the defending champs. And I'm really
curious to see the postgame presser stuff. I want to
see where Jamal Murray and and Michael Malone, where their
heads are at. We're gonna get to that in a minute.
I won't write them off, but like, I don't know
how you could pick against Minnesota at this point. They're
(10:20):
They're like Denver doesn't have anything they can do. There's
no trump card, there's no adjustment, there's no nothing. Michael
Malone and and Jokichen and all those guys, they used
to talk a lot about how we've seen everything, we've
seen everything. You haven't seen this. You don't have an
adjustment for this. The only adjustment is to meet their physicality,
(10:40):
which we're gonna talk about here in a little bit.
But I was wrong. I just I can't. I can't
put it any more flatly. I was wrong about the
Minnesota Timberwolves. And here's how wrong I was. If they're
allowed to defend with this level of physicality, I think
they'll win the trophy. You think Dallas or Oklahoma City
is gonna magically hold up well under this physical onslaught?
(11:04):
You think Boston is You think you think Jason Tatum
and Jaylen Brown are just gonna eat these guys up.
I don't do you do you think Jalen Brunson by
himself or the Pacers guards are gonna magically solve this
Minnesota defense. If they are allowed to guard like this,
with this level of physicality, they are going to hoist
Hilary O'Brien trophy. It's like down the roster too, Like
(11:27):
I was blown up. There was a possession with Michael
Porter Junior on the left wing, and I think the
third quarter where Mike Conley, the smallest player on the Timberwolves,
had him pump faking at Ghosts and jacking up a
contested leaner, And I'm like, Mike Conley's locked in. Carl
Towns is locked in. Nasried is a guy that's had
some defensive limitations over the years. Now he's got a
(11:48):
role here in this series where he can be, you know,
banging with Jokic. So it's more of a matchup he
can handle. But even the guys on this roster that
are like historically not great defensive players, are like is
playing the best defense of their career. It is a
cultural thing from the top down. These guys want it.
You can tell they want the trophy and they are
willing to beat the hell out of you to get it.
(12:11):
And someone's got to figure out a way to stop them,
or they're just gonna do it, and and so like.
And here's the crazy part too. We're focusing on the defense.
Anthony Edwards pours in another efficient twenty seven points. He's
been the best player in the NBA in these playoffs.
He's literally playing like the best player in the world.
Carl Towns another efficient twenty seven. That's the major subplot here.
(12:32):
We're all focused on the defense. Their offense has been awesome.
Their offense has been awesome over the course of this
playoff run. They're knocking down three point shots. They're driving
and kicking and making good reads. Their shot creators are
aggressive and initiating contact and like really being the aggressor.
Like they're getting consistent production off the bench from nas
(12:54):
and to Kile Alexander Walker. They're They're playing at an
insanely high level. Now think about how crazy that is.
They've won six straight postseason games. Four of them were
against Kevin Durant, Bradleybial, Devin Booker, and the last two
were against the undisputed best player in the world, although
Aunt's trying to horner that territory right now, and the
(13:14):
and uh in Jamal Murray, the guy who's literally lit
up everybody else in the league for the last two years.
It's it's unbelievable. I'm completely stunned. Never been more wrong
about a basketball team on the Nuggets front. I was
equally shocked tonight by how Denver fell apart. They completely
(13:34):
crumbled mentally early in the game too. I was I
couldn't believe what I was seeing when Aunt drives to
the basket in KCP, who was late on his rotation
and jumped vertically but in the charge circle, So there's
no universe where that's an offensive foul, and Aunt just
jumps into his body and makes a layup, and Michael
(13:56):
Malone comes screaming out onto the court, yelling at the
ref in his face, like lost his damn mind over
a play that was very clearly not an offensive foul.
If anything, Aunt should have gone to the line because
KCP jumped and met him in the charge circle like it.
And I'm sitting there and I'm like, what are you doing.
You're supposed to be the leader, You're supposed to be
(14:17):
cal him and under control. You just bum rushed the
ref and screened in his face. Very that very easily
could have been a double tech, let alone a tech.
He could have been kicked out of the game. He's
very lucky that he didn't get a technical at all
in that situation. And immediately I'm like registering that. I'm like, okay,
Denver shook right now. And then a few possessions later,
(14:39):
on another physical defensive possession from Minnesota, Jamal Murray sitting
at the end of the bench hurls a heat pack
onto the floor, which, by the way, who the hell
knows what's gonna happen with that. There could very well
be a suspension in place. I hope they don't suspend him,
as stupid as it was, because I want to see
Minnesota beat Denver at full strength. But like when I
saw that, I'm like, oh, they don't get it. They
(15:00):
I think this is about the refs. It's not about
the refs. The thing is is, if you've been watching
this postseason all eight series, in the first round, they've
all had I've talked about this frequently on the show.
This is the most physical playoffs I've seen. I've said
that many times on the show. I think that's clear.
(15:20):
There's a lot of shit people are getting away with.
There is a play in the Lakers series where Dangel
Russell got smacked in the face very clearly on video.
It got reviewed and it didn't get overturned. The refs
are letting everything go, so you had to know that
coming into the series. You had to know that after
game one, so one of two things is gonna happen here.
(15:42):
You're either going to blame the refs and crumble, or
you're gonna meet that physicality with physicality. And the fact
that Michael Malone had that meltdown and Jamal Murray threw
a heat pack on the floor, that's not a good sign.
It was embarrassing. And from there it's so interesting to
(16:04):
me because I've seen a lot of basketball games like
this over the years. Physical ball pressure has a tendency
to speed people up, and it was crazy to see
everybody on Denver get sped up to the point where
they just started making mistakes. There were a lot of
unforced errors in that stretch. Hocket passes into traffic that
weren't open. Jaal Murray in the second half whipped a
(16:28):
behind the back pass to a player that was clearly
guarded underneath the basket. Like they actually played Denver into
losing their sense of focus and attention to detail. How
unusual is that they're They're the defending champs, They're the
team that's supposed to be resilient in that type of situation.
(16:49):
It was unbelievable. And so this is why I put
in my notes I'm so curious to see the postgame
pressers because this is this series is not over. Denver
can go into Minnesota, win Game three, and you're more
or less in the position that most teams are in
after you split at home in the first two because
the home team almost always wins Game three. That's a
buzzsaw game. Right you win game three, you're right back
(17:10):
in this series. It's not over now. I think Minnesota's
gonna win, but it's not over. And like to me,
it's all gonna be about mentality. Moving forward. For Denver,
if you go into that locker room and you're like,
I can't believe that they're letting them do this to us,
it's over. You lost. It's over because it's not good.
(17:33):
Game three is gonna be just like this. You can
politic all you want in the presser, you can call
the league office, you can you could send him a
highlight tape like Darryl Moray of all the fouls that
you thought should have been called. In Game three is
gonna be a It's gonna be a blood bath again.
So here's the deal. Do you want to get your
hands dirty? Do you want to get down in that
blood bath and meet them at that level? Because you
(17:54):
got some big, strong dudes. You got Jokic, you got
Aaron Gordon, you got some dudes you can do this too.
But you better meet them there. Again. I said this
at the beginning of the series. It's very different from
the Lakers series in the sense that Denver wanted to
out execute the Lakers. As a half court offense, you
have to do more damage to Minnesota's offense than they
(18:16):
are doing to you. And the only way you're gonna
do that is if you meet their force with force
one of the things that Minnesota does. And by the way,
this was something that stood out to me in the game,
like Minnesota was getting some foul calls that were of
similar types of contact to what Denver was getting. The
difference is it would be like not a lot of
contact and then someone would foul and they'd call it.
(18:37):
Minnesota from the opening tip is fouling and fouling and
fouling and fouling and fouling, and they actually put the
refs in a bind where they can't call it every
possession and so they get away with a lot. That's
what Denver needs to do. You need to come out
in game three and start fouling and fouling and fouling
and grabbing and holding and top locking and denying and
ball pressuring and just beating the hell out of everybody
(18:57):
all over the floor. That's what you got to do.
So if I see postgame pressers tonight and I see
Mike Malone say they kicked our ass tonight and we
better be ready for a damn war in game three,
then I like Denver's chances to come back and do it.
The same thing goes for Jamal Murray. If you go
in there and you're like, oh, it's my calf. If
(19:19):
you go in there and you're like, oh, I you
know they're they're they're founding me like crazy and they're
getting away with it, then it's over because that's the
wrong mentality. The only way you're gonna get back in
this series is by meeting their force with force. For
the record, I think it's too late. I think this.
I think Minnesota is gonna win the series. Now it's
not over. Of course Denver can come back, but I
(19:39):
think Minnesota is going to win. But the only pathway
forward for Denver is that they have to they have
to meet this force with force. We're gonna do a
little video tomorrow where we go over some film on
some more like x's and os specifics. Today won about
x's and o's to me. Today Today was purely about
(20:00):
force of will and physicality, and in Minnesota punked the
Denver Nuggets. Tonight they punked him, and now they're in
real danger of a sweep if they don't get their
shit together. All right, moving on to Pacers Nicks. I
want to start with the end of the game and
we'll work our way backwards. So fifteen. Really interesting sequence.
(20:21):
So Brunston had been cooking Andrew and Nemhart all night long,
and we're gonna get into more detail on that in
a few minutes. But Jalen Brunson was isoating Andrew Nemhart
kind of around the elbow on the right side of
the floor, and Aaron Nee Smith is guarding Dante DiVincenzo
on the left wing and he's kind of sitting down,
digging down into the driving line. Haliburton's guarding Josh Hart
(20:42):
in the left corner, and Nie Smith throws a double
team at Brunson, And what I thought was really interesting
is Halliburton did his windshield wipeer rotation. He rotated at
the same time as Nie Smith. But Devincenzo positioned himself
about five feet behind the three point line. It's like
a deep three, you know, one of those classic Ryan
Anderson three. Your old Rockets fans will remember that. And
(21:03):
as a result of that, Halliburton's close out just didn't
matter because he was so far away from the rim,
and den de Vincenzo just stuck the three pointer. And
again the big thing there is Jalen Brunsy was cooking
Andrew Nembard the entire game to draw that specific double team.
So Devincenzo hits a three, it's one eighteen, one to fifteen.
We go down the other end. Siakam hits like a
(21:23):
really tough driving layup over Og and Obi and Og
defended it well. But Siakim's big advantage in this matchup
is length, and he just kind of reached out and
got that scoop shot extended outside of him and put
it in off the glass. Really really impressive shots. So
now it's one eighteen, one seventeen. Then the Pacers forced
a turnover with some pressure on Brunson. Pressure in the
(21:43):
back court that they got away with, and then pressure
in the front court. After a timeout, Brunson throws the
ball off at Haliburton. It bounces back and hits Brunts
and now it's PACER's ball and we get an illegal
screen called on Miles Turner. Now, for the record, I
don't care about it in the context of this game.
Bad calls happen in basketball games. As a player and
(22:06):
as a team, you know that going into the game,
if you let a game stay close, you're always at
risk that a bad call could hurt you. Maybe even
a couple of bad calls, and the Pacers got on
the bad end of two bad ones at the end
of this game, not just that one, but also the
bruntson pocket past. I think it was to Heartenstein, I
can't remember, but it was a pocket past. It might
(22:27):
have been Josh Hart, can't remember. Brunton throws that pocket
past and Nie Smith hits it with his hand and
gets called for a kickball. Like that was a bad call.
So but like that's the thing. As a pacer, you
gotta be looking at that, like we got. We were
on the wrong end of some bad calls today. Totally
just part of the game of basketball. What I have
a problem with is the larger issue that the NBA
(22:48):
is having with officiating now, because why in the hell
was that called in that situation, That specific type of
screen where it's like there's a little bit of movement,
a little bit of nudge at the end. That same
screen happens like fifty times in an NBA game, and
it might get called once or twice, and usually in
(23:08):
the first quarter or something like that, almost never at
the end of games. And this is the larger issue.
NBA refs do not understand why they're there. We have
refs to facilitate basketball games. That's it. It's not about
enforcing the rule book to the letter. That's not what
(23:29):
this is about. The goal is for us to not
even notice they're there. There is a lot of discretion
in this job, and the discretion is let the players
decide the game, not the officials. And so what I
have a problem with is when there's a call in
a gray area in the ref defaults to blow the whistle. So,
for instance, if a ball screen's coming and you're the ref,
(23:51):
you have to watch out for an illegal screen, you're right,
And like there have been times where the wrong end
of this. What was the one God it was the
was it that Rockets team that the Jazz It was
in the late nineties and John, I think it was
John Stockton broke three, broke free for a three at
the top of the key that won the series. And
there was just a like an obnoxious illegal screen. Like
(24:15):
so it looked like, you know, like Zach Martin pulling
and and blocking him like he's a pulling guard. It like, yeah,
you don't want you have to call it if it's outrageous,
if it's outside of that gray area. But what bothers
meme is inside of that gray area, when rep's a
default to blowing the whistle, it makes no sense to
(24:36):
me like that dude was looking for an excuse to
blow the whistle, which means he doesn't understand why he
was there. You're not there to blow the whistle. You're
there to facilitate a basketball game, and I thought that
was the Anthony Edwards tech is another example. All he
did was walk over and stare. There have been a
(24:56):
dozen more boisterous trash talking sessions or complaints just in
the few games since then that went uncalled as technicals,
which means that ref was just waiting for a reason,
and we have to find a way to get that
out of the game. There needs to be like an
overhaul of the way that we train refs to help
(25:17):
them understand that when things are in the gray area,
we would prefer to watch the players determine the outcome,
and that means not gifting a team a point over
a stare down, And that means not calling every damn
illegal screen or you could call a carry on every possession.
If you slow the game down and watching slow motion,
(25:38):
almost every ball handler puts their hand a little bit
under the ball and the ball stops spinning. By the book,
that's a carry, But somehow we have discretion there. And
that was just so frustrating because that was such an
entertaining basketball game. Back and forth. Pacers are playing really well.
Runson hits a bunch of big shots laid You're in
this dog fight, and all of a sudden, you get
(25:59):
this amazing Siakam layup in this big time defensive play
from the Pacers to get the ball back, and they
don't even get a shot because of a really iffy
illegal screen. I had a huge problem with that call.
But let's get back to the game at large. So
obviously after the illegal screen, the Knicks closed the game
out at the foul line that it's over from there.
Right on the Knicks front, Brunson was just unreal. He
(26:22):
burnt Andrew embar to a crisp in that game and
literally forced the Pacers to double team in at the
end in that same matchup, which led to the eventual
game winner from Dante DiVincenzo. Now the most consecutive forty
point playoff game since Michael Jordan. That's some rare company
for you there. I was thinking about this earlier, you
could make the case that Brunson has been the best
(26:45):
small guard in the league this year, like last year
it was Stephen Dane. I think you could say that
that Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell have kind of made
their move on that corner. Again, it's a small sample.
You want to see it sustained. But within this season
the two best small guards have been Jalen Brunson and
Donovan Mitchell. They've been killing. And on that note, what
(27:05):
I thought was really interesting. I couldn't believe the stat
when I saw it. I was scrolling through Instagram earlier today.
So they are eight teams remaining, right, that means what
forty starters? Six players out of those forty are over
thirty years old? How interesting is that? Like the younger
(27:27):
like when we talk about experience now it doesn't mean,
it doesn't seem to mean as much like the younger
guys are taking over the league. Six players over thirty
in the starting lineups out of forty remaining here in
the second round, I thought that was super fascinating. Dante
Di Vincenzo and Josh Hart a bunch of timely scoring
that huge and one late from Josh Hart, got a
(27:49):
couple of big offensive rebounds to Dante DiVincenzo, not just
that three really lively as a shot creator all night.
The starting lineup, just the starters for the Knicks scored
one hundred and eighteen points. And then one of the
big things that I wanted to shout out, I thought
Dante DiVincenzo did an unbelievable job on Tyrese Haliburton. And
(28:10):
this kind of goes back to what we were talking
about with Jamal Murray earlier, but Dante DiVincenzo. When you
like what happened with Murray, they're pressuring in full court,
they're randomly trapping in, they're being physical all over the place,
and it plays Jamal into this like not just poor shooting,
but poor decision making, right I thought. I thought Halliburton
(28:32):
was really bad down the stretch of this game and
super passive throughout, and a big part of that was
Dante DiVincenzo just got up in his grill, got physical,
in handsy, and threw him out of whack. He hit
What was I talking about in the Nugget series, Like, oh,
they were trying to force pocket passes that weren't there.
They weren't seeing help defenders that were there. What happened
(28:53):
with Halliburton at the end of this game. There was
that random pocket pass that he tried to force when
nothing was open. It was a turnover. There was the
play where he was driving along the white the right
side and og Ananobi was guarding the strong side corner
and Halliburton just didn't even see him and og went
in and swiped the ball free. I think that was
the play where he went down the other end he
got the dunk. There was like a play where he
(29:17):
came off a ball screen and picked up his dribble
for no reason and then threw like this crazy lob
back across the court to Miles Turner and I'm like, whoa,
Like he's losing his focus and decision making now, and
so like again, it's a much smaller version of what
the Timberwolves did to the Nuggets. But but Dante Divincenzo's
individual defense on Halliburton did a number on the Pacers.
(29:40):
It was a big part of why they had to
lean so much on Andrew Nemhart late in the game, who,
by the way, was really good. But so it worked out.
But they had to lean a lot on how on
Nemhard and Siakam late in the game because Devincenzo basically
like just pressured Haliburton out of it. Now. I know
Haliburton hadn't really looked the same since he uh, since
he got back from his hamstring injury, but like this,
(30:02):
this is playoff basketball, and it looks like it's gonna
be playoff basketball for the foreseeable future. And so Halliburton's
got it. I don't know if it's putting on a
little bit more muscle or just getting better at handling
ball pressure, but he's got to figure that out because
that problem is not going away in this series. Devincenzo's
gonna be in his grill in Game two, and he's
gonna be in his girl in Game three, and he's
gonna be in his grill in Game four. And if
you somehow get some success on Devincenzo and they switch
(30:24):
him off, it'll probably be a Duce McBride doing the
exact same thing. On the Pacers front, I was really
really surprised with the matchups that Indiana went with. I
talked about before the series. I thought Nie Smith should
guard Brunson and that they should put em Hard on
Devincenzo and then put Halliburton on Josh Hart. Obviously, some
(30:45):
rebounding issues there were Josh Hart, but you can rebound
as a team. There are ways to address that at
the team level. I thought that a Nie Smith gave
the best combination of size, strength, physicality and athleticism on
the ball on Brunson, and I thought Lati Vincenzo, being
the secondary creator Nemhart would be a good matchup there.
Nemhart on Brunson I just didn't get. He's not very
(31:06):
big and he's not very strong. He's a good guard defender,
but Brunson's playing at an insanely high level. And the
main thing I noticed early in the game, first possession,
Brunson just walks him down to the right block and
easily shoots a fade away over the top of him.
Brunson feels really comfortable shooting over the top of Nemhart.
Here's why that matters. The Sixers series was not like that.
(31:27):
Jalen did not feel comfortable shooting a pull up jumper,
like like straight up face to face against Kelly Ubrey
or Nick Batum to the same degree that he does
against Nemhart famously in game five, if I remember correctly,
that was the overtime game, and Brunson tried to shoot
a pull up three and batom guests and like almost
blocked it, and brunts him threw the ball out of
bounds because length, length is something that bothers pull up
(31:50):
shots when you're face to face, right, So what Brunson
did against the Sixers is he found soft spots in
pick and roll. He get batum or ubre in the
trail position on a ball screen and try to get
some separation in the ball screen, and then he'd hit
something in the middle before he got to embiid. Very
different type of shot making, which, by the way, is
(32:11):
why I talked about in this series the Pacers putting
more of like a I talked about it after the
Sixers series too, Just more of like a like a
like a Bruce Brown archetype, like a low center of gravity, bigger,
stronger guard that can flatten out some of Brunson's drives.
The problem is is when he's too small, like Nemhard,
he can just too easily shoot over the top, and
so didn't like that matchup. Dante DiVincenzo was really good
(32:33):
in this whole game. I didn't understand putting I didn't
understand putting Haliburton on him because Devincenzo was getting comfortable
and was active as a scorer in this game. One
of the big things that down the stretch that was
interesting we talked about from one to fifteen on, but
a big part of the Nick's scoring down the stretch
before one fifteen was ghost screens with guard guard screens
(32:58):
with Dante de vincenz Would we talked about in the
series preview was gonna be a huge part of the
Knicks offense. They were going to try to get better
matchups regard guard screens. So what they did is they
kept getting Brunson downhill by having Halliburton's man set the
screen Devincenzo. Halliburton would hedge, but Halliburton was doing a
bad job of hedging. Like like, again, your one job
(33:20):
on the hedge is to cut off the drive, but
Halliburton was bailing on the hedge and kind of even
getting in the way of Nemhard. So Brunson was able
to get downhill easily. And again, Devincenzo scored a bunch
in this game. And so like you want to hedge
and recover on a guy that's not a good movement shooter.
And so that's where it makes more sense for me
to in my opinion, to put him on Josh Hart. Now,
(33:41):
of course, if you put him on Josh Hart, you're
gonna open up some issues on the glass, but again,
Josh Hart was doing damage on the glass anyway. That's
a team concept. You have to rebound as a team, right.
So a big adjustment that I'm expecting from Indiana either
expecting a game to you were hoping for in game two,
I would move Nie Smith over to Brunson's so that
you have a bigger, stronger, taller athlete that can at
(34:03):
least bother Brunson's over the top shooting. Right. Then I
would put an em Hard on Devincenzo. So if they
run guard guard screens with Devincenzo, you can just switch
at that point at least or you could try to
fight through, but or if you hedge and recover, it's
a better athlete guard who can do a better job
of hedging and recovering out to Devincenzo. And then at
(34:24):
if you try to bring Josh Hart into those screens
and you have Josh Hart screen and you have Haliburton hedge,
you don't have to worry about the movement shooting aspect
that Devincenzo brings to the table. So I'd like to
see the Pacers kind of mix up all their matchups
in games two, but I guess we'll see. But I
want to shout a couple guys for the Pacers though.
I thought Aaron NEI Smith was awesome with his slashing,
(34:45):
especially late in the game. That dunk that he had
on Mitchell Robinson was disgusting. That was a really really
good playoff dunk. Andrew Nemhard's shot creation late had a
couple of big time driving layups that were really high
level plays at a short little pull up jump or two.
It was big time that he stepped up the way
he did because Haliburton was struggling so much. And then
Pascal Siakam again, he's got one of the toughest defensive
(35:06):
matchups in the series because og is kind of constructed
to make him shoot over the top or at least
around him to the sides, and Siakam just had a
couple of really big shots here, that short pull up jumper,
the step back late and then he had that big
scoop layup that got it down to one eighteen, one seventeen.
So gonna be a really good series. I'd like to
see the Pacers mix up the matchups. Haliburton has to
(35:26):
be better just in general, regardless of circumstance. Tyres Haliburton,
you're the leader of this team. You have to find
a way to be more impactful offensively, and again, handling
that ball pressure is gonna be key. But this is
gonna be a really fun series. I think you saw
some of the advantages that the Pacers have. TJ McConnell
was unbelievable. TJ McConnell's dribble penetration is just like one
(35:49):
of those things that I think is like a lot
of people in the league don't even realize, Like TJ's
literally one of the very best guards in the league
at just beating people off the dribble. I was watching
it tonight, just like cleanly toasting you know, guys like
Dante Di Vincenzo and Duce McBride off the dribble and
getting into the lane relatively easily. He's added that, you
know that little mid range pull up jump shot. He's
(36:10):
very good passer as well. It's just an unbelievable competitor,
big time night from TJ McConnell. But again, just like
shout out to the Knicks, shout out to Jalen Brunson
playing at the highest four game stretch as a score
since Michael Jordan. Gonna be a fun series, all right, guys.
I feel like that entire episode is just me yelling
(36:33):
it was crazy. It was a crazy night, all right, guys.
That is all I have for tonight. I'm planning on
doing something small tomorrow, just a little bit of film,
probably on Wolves Nuggets, just talking about how they kind
of got them out of there, out of whack mentally.
But I appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Don't forget.
We had series previews earlier this morning for Celtics Cavs
and MAVs Thunder. You can find that on our YouTube feed,
(36:53):
and they were also going live tomorrow night after those
games Game ones. I will see you guys. Then the
(37:21):
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welcome to hoop tonight here at the ball. Youme happy Monday, everybody.
I'll ball if you guys are having a great week,
(01:57):
jam pack show for you tonight. The most shocked playoff
game that I can ever remember seeing in my time
as a basketball fan. As the Wolves go up two
to oh in Denver without Rudy Gobert, are gonna break
that game down? And then one of the worst calls
that I've ever seen, probably not the worst, but certainly
on the list, an illegal screen at the end of
the Knicks Pacers game. We're gonna mainly focus on the
(02:18):
basketball there. But I got a little bit of a rant,
not based on that specific call, but just officials in
general around the NBA, because that's becoming a little big,
a little bit of a problem. But a jam packed
night of NBA basketball, we're gonna break it all down.
You guys know the drive before we get started. Subscribe
to a brand of YouTube channel so you don't miss
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underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements.
(02:40):
Don't forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your
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least keep roping mail back questions in those YouTube comments.
All right, let's talk some basketball. So again, as I
said in the open, I have never been more shocked
by a playoff result than this one. I have the
defending champs in a must win game at home, The
(03:03):
defensive anchor who made many of the biggest plays in
Game one is out for the birth of his child,
and they get the living shit kicked out of them.
Not only that, the Nuggets completely fall apart mentally in
the process. I just can't ever remember. I've seen crazy sequences,
like we saw two of them at the end of
(03:24):
that Sixers Knicks series, right, like a couple games that
get quite literally snatched from you know, victory from the
jaws of defeat, so to speak. I've seen crazy sequences.
I've seen crazy plays. I've never seen a more shocking
playoff result than this one, even like looking back at
like some other ones recently, Like remember when the Phoenix
(03:45):
Suns went into that Game seven against Luca and the
MAVs and they and Luca just made him quit. Like
at least you can look at that and go like, well,
Devin Booker and Chris Paul neither of those guys are
like real superstar level players, and Luka Dancic is there's
a huge, like mental advantage that Luca has. He's just
the best player on the floor by a mile, and
(04:06):
he just went in there and snatched their soul right
Like it wasn't It was a shocking result in the
dynamic that took place in how dramatic it was, but
like you would have been surprised right to think that
Luca could do that to another team. It just doesn't
make sense. Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world.
The Denver Nuggets are the defending champs, and they've shown
(04:27):
championship medal in so many different situations. And I want
to just throw that credit to the Minnesota Timberwolves, because
I in addition to never being more shocked about a
playoff result, I don't think I've ever been more wrong
about a basketball team than I was about the Minnesota Timberwolves.
This was a team that I just took too much
(04:50):
stock in their evidence from the regular season. I focused
too much on how limited their offense was, especially in
late game situations. Too much stock and Ant's age and
whether or not he'd be ready to lead a playoff
run like this, too much stock in some of their
issues closing games in general on both ends of the floor.
I focused way too much on that, and I missed
a simple thing that tilted Minnesota's way, and they took
(05:12):
advantage of it and they're running with it. And that
is when the league, right around halfway through the season,
started to tilt things in terms of officiating more in
the direction of the defense, which is something I think
is great for the game, something that all of us
have been begging for for a long time as that inflated,
offensively minded league was getting a little bit unwatchable at times.
(05:35):
And there's still some remnants of it, like we've seen
some of the officiating over the course of this playoff run,
especially in like grifty stuff, right, there's still some remnants
of it. But the league tilting in that direction was
something that desperately needed to happen in Minnesota, and we
should have seen this coming. To you, Minnesota Timberwolves fans
who saw it coming, kudos to you because I missed it.
(05:55):
But they took advantage of those rule changes, and they've
leaned into it from the opening tip. They're grabbing, they're
holding their hand checking, they're being physical, they're they're top
locking to prevent guys from going on screens. They're picking
up full court, they're pressuring everybody all over the floor.
They're pressuring Yokics full court with nasried half the time.
(06:17):
Like they are leaning into it. They understand what you know,
and this is something that I talk about a lot
with basketball teams, like understand what your advantage is and
lean into it. Don't go away from your advantage, lean
into your advantage. Minnesota knows their advantage is their defensive capability,
their size, their athleticism, and their overall defensive talent. They're
leaning into that and they're reaping the dividends here in
(06:40):
the postseason that I've never been more wrong about a
basketball team. I had a take, probably one of my
worst takes as a basketball analyst, when I said that
the Timberwolves had about the same chance to beat Denver
as La. God, that was stupid. Like, I've never been
more wrong about a team. I'm completely flow, and so
(07:00):
shout out to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Man. I owe them,
I owe them an apology. In addition, they are perfectly
constructed to beat the Denver Nuggets. Like it's honestly kind
of diabolical when you think about it. Like Tim Conley
knows first hand. He must have known that Jokic was coming. Obviously,
(07:22):
he was there for at least one of the MVP
runs if I remember correctly. But like he he had
to have known, and he went into Minnesota and he
constructed a team to beat the Denver Nuggets. And what's
crazy is like everyone was really down on the Rudy
go Bear trade. I was down on it right when
it happened. But I immediately liked it during the season
(07:45):
because I loved that dynamic of the elite perimeter defenders
Anthony Edwards, Jade McDaniels, and Rudy Gobert. But where I
was wrong again there is I was like, okay, but
the two bigs thing is stupid. You gotta trade Carl Towns.
And now in retrospect, I'm watching that late first half
post up where Jokic is posting up Nas Red and
(08:08):
Nas and he goes to his left shoulder hook and
Naz just kind of bullies him off of his spot
and blocks him on a hook shot, and Jokic gets
the ball back and barely gets another one off and
just flings it up at the rim and and Minnesota
gets the rebound and they running the other way. And
I'm like, this is genius. They're constructed to beat Denver.
They have two guys in nas Read and Carl Towns
(08:31):
who are both big and strong enough to flatten out
Jokic's post ups. He can't go through them. And then
when they're healthy, they have already go bear on the
back line. It's like, Jokic, we didn't we didn't put
nearly enough stock in what Jokic was saying after Game one,
I need two of me. You're damn right, because because
Minnesota is literally just layering size and athleticism on that
(08:56):
Denver front line and it's working. It's diabolically stuff from
Tim Conley went into Minnesota and built a roster to
beat the Denver Nuggets. And then you add to that
a tweak in the NBA is officiating that this team
grabbed a hold of, and it's and they're leaning into
their strength and they're running with it. It's so it's
(09:16):
so impressive to me. It really comes down to this,
because of Jada McDaniels and Nikile, Alexander Walker and Anthony Edwards.
They can guard Jamal Murray really well. And we're gonna
get into that in more detail in a minute. That's
not the calf muscle. He's in jail right now. Two,
they can guard Yokic well. So since they can guard
Jamal well, and they can guard Yokic well, and they've
(09:38):
got that two man game under wraps. Now all of
a sudden, it's shining. It's putting a bigger offensive responsibility
on the other players, and it's expecting Contavious call Well,
Pope Michael Porter Junior and Aaron Gordon to shoulder more
of an offensive low. It's just not gonna work. And
so like there they like I again, I will, I
(09:58):
will not declare the the series over because I have
too much respect for the defending champs. And I'm really
curious to see the postgame presser stuff. I want to
see where Jamal Murray and and Michael Malone, where their
heads are at. We're gonna get to that in a minute.
I won't write them off, but like, I don't know
how you could pick against Minnesota at this point. They're
(10:20):
They're like Denver doesn't have anything they can do. There's
no trump card, there's no adjustment, there's no nothing. Michael
Malone and and Jokichen and all those guys, they used
to talk a lot about how we've seen everything, we've
seen everything. You haven't seen this. You don't have an
adjustment for this. The only adjustment is to meet their physicality,
(10:40):
which we're gonna talk about here in a little bit.
But I was wrong. I just I can't. I can't
put it any more flatly. I was wrong about the
Minnesota Timberwolves. And here's how wrong I was. If they're
allowed to defend with this level of physicality, I think
they'll win the trophy. You think Dallas or Oklahoma City
is gonna magically hold up well under this physical onslaught?
(11:04):
You think Boston is You think you think Jason Tatum
and Jaylen Brown are just gonna eat these guys up.
I don't do you do you think Jalen Brunson by
himself or the Pacers guards are gonna magically solve this
Minnesota defense. If they are allowed to guard like this,
with this level of physicality, they are going to hoist
Hilary O'Brien trophy. It's like down the roster too, Like
(11:27):
I was blown up. There was a possession with Michael
Porter Junior on the left wing, and I think the
third quarter where Mike Conley, the smallest player on the Timberwolves,
had him pump faking at Ghosts and jacking up a
contested leaner, And I'm like, Mike Conley's locked in. Carl
Towns is locked in. Nasried is a guy that's had
some defensive limitations over the years. Now he's got a
(11:48):
role here in this series where he can be, you know,
banging with Jokic. So it's more of a matchup he
can handle. But even the guys on this roster that
are like historically not great defensive players, are like is
playing the best defense of their career. It is a
cultural thing from the top down. These guys want it.
You can tell they want the trophy and they are
willing to beat the hell out of you to get it.
(12:11):
And someone's got to figure out a way to stop them,
or they're just gonna do it, and and so like.
And here's the crazy part too. We're focusing on the defense.
Anthony Edwards pours in another efficient twenty seven points. He's
been the best player in the NBA in these playoffs.
He's literally playing like the best player in the world.
Carl Towns another efficient twenty seven. That's the major subplot here.
(12:32):
We're all focused on the defense. Their offense has been awesome.
Their offense has been awesome over the course of this
playoff run. They're knocking down three point shots. They're driving
and kicking and making good reads. Their shot creators are
aggressive and initiating contact and like really being the aggressor.
Like they're getting consistent production off the bench from nas
(12:54):
and to Kile Alexander Walker. They're They're playing at an
insanely high level. Now think about how crazy that is.
They've won six straight postseason games. Four of them were
against Kevin Durant, Bradleybial, Devin Booker, and the last two
were against the undisputed best player in the world, although
Aunt's trying to horner that territory right now, and the
(13:14):
and uh in Jamal Murray, the guy who's literally lit
up everybody else in the league for the last two years.
It's it's unbelievable. I'm completely stunned. Never been more wrong
about a basketball team on the Nuggets front. I was
equally shocked tonight by how Denver fell apart. They completely
(13:34):
crumbled mentally early in the game too. I was I
couldn't believe what I was seeing when Aunt drives to
the basket in KCP, who was late on his rotation
and jumped vertically but in the charge circle, So there's
no universe where that's an offensive foul, and Aunt just
jumps into his body and makes a layup, and Michael
(13:56):
Malone comes screaming out onto the court, yelling at the
ref in his face, like lost his damn mind over
a play that was very clearly not an offensive foul.
If anything, Aunt should have gone to the line because
KCP jumped and met him in the charge circle like it.
And I'm sitting there and I'm like, what are you doing.
You're supposed to be the leader, You're supposed to be
(14:17):
cal him and under control. You just bum rushed the
ref and screened in his face. Very that very easily
could have been a double tech, let alone a tech.
He could have been kicked out of the game. He's
very lucky that he didn't get a technical at all
in that situation. And immediately I'm like registering that. I'm like, okay,
Denver shook right now. And then a few possessions later,
(14:39):
on another physical defensive possession from Minnesota, Jamal Murray sitting
at the end of the bench hurls a heat pack
onto the floor, which, by the way, who the hell
knows what's gonna happen with that. There could very well
be a suspension in place. I hope they don't suspend him,
as stupid as it was, because I want to see
Minnesota beat Denver at full strength. But like when I
saw that, I'm like, oh, they don't get it. They
(15:00):
I think this is about the refs. It's not about
the refs. The thing is is, if you've been watching
this postseason all eight series, in the first round, they've
all had I've talked about this frequently on the show.
This is the most physical playoffs I've seen. I've said
that many times on the show. I think that's clear.
(15:20):
There's a lot of shit people are getting away with.
There is a play in the Lakers series where Dangel
Russell got smacked in the face very clearly on video.
It got reviewed and it didn't get overturned. The refs
are letting everything go, so you had to know that
coming into the series. You had to know that after
game one, so one of two things is gonna happen here.
(15:42):
You're either going to blame the refs and crumble, or
you're gonna meet that physicality with physicality. And the fact
that Michael Malone had that meltdown and Jamal Murray threw
a heat pack on the floor, that's not a good sign.
It was embarrassing. And from there it's so interesting to
(16:04):
me because I've seen a lot of basketball games like
this over the years. Physical ball pressure has a tendency
to speed people up, and it was crazy to see
everybody on Denver get sped up to the point where
they just started making mistakes. There were a lot of
unforced errors in that stretch. Hocket passes into traffic that
weren't open. Jaal Murray in the second half whipped a
(16:28):
behind the back pass to a player that was clearly
guarded underneath the basket. Like they actually played Denver into
losing their sense of focus and attention to detail. How
unusual is that they're They're the defending champs, They're the
team that's supposed to be resilient in that type of situation.
(16:49):
It was unbelievable. And so this is why I put
in my notes I'm so curious to see the postgame
pressers because this is this series is not over. Denver
can go into Minnesota, win Game three, and you're more
or less in the position that most teams are in
after you split at home in the first two because
the home team almost always wins Game three. That's a
buzzsaw game. Right you win game three, you're right back
(17:10):
in this series. It's not over now. I think Minnesota's
gonna win, but it's not over. And like to me,
it's all gonna be about mentality. Moving forward. For Denver,
if you go into that locker room and you're like,
I can't believe that they're letting them do this to us,
it's over. You lost. It's over because it's not good.
(17:33):
Game three is gonna be just like this. You can
politic all you want in the presser, you can call
the league office, you can you could send him a
highlight tape like Darryl Moray of all the fouls that
you thought should have been called. In Game three is
gonna be a It's gonna be a blood bath again.
So here's the deal. Do you want to get your
hands dirty? Do you want to get down in that
blood bath and meet them at that level? Because you
(17:54):
got some big, strong dudes. You got Jokic, you got
Aaron Gordon, you got some dudes you can do this too.
But you better meet them there. Again. I said this
at the beginning of the series. It's very different from
the Lakers series in the sense that Denver wanted to
out execute the Lakers. As a half court offense, you
have to do more damage to Minnesota's offense than they
(18:16):
are doing to you. And the only way you're gonna
do that is if you meet their force with force
one of the things that Minnesota does. And by the way,
this was something that stood out to me in the game,
like Minnesota was getting some foul calls that were of
similar types of contact to what Denver was getting. The
difference is it would be like not a lot of
contact and then someone would foul and they'd call it.
(18:37):
Minnesota from the opening tip is fouling and fouling and
fouling and fouling and fouling, and they actually put the
refs in a bind where they can't call it every
possession and so they get away with a lot. That's
what Denver needs to do. You need to come out
in game three and start fouling and fouling and fouling
and grabbing and holding and top locking and denying and
ball pressuring and just beating the hell out of everybody
(18:57):
all over the floor. That's what you got to do.
So if I see postgame pressers tonight and I see
Mike Malone say they kicked our ass tonight and we
better be ready for a damn war in game three,
then I like Denver's chances to come back and do it.
The same thing goes for Jamal Murray. If you go
in there and you're like, oh, it's my calf. If
(19:19):
you go in there and you're like, oh, I you
know they're they're they're founding me like crazy and they're
getting away with it, then it's over because that's the
wrong mentality. The only way you're gonna get back in
this series is by meeting their force with force. For
the record, I think it's too late. I think this.
I think Minnesota is gonna win the series. Now it's
not over. Of course Denver can come back, but I
(19:39):
think Minnesota is going to win. But the only pathway
forward for Denver is that they have to they have
to meet this force with force. We're gonna do a
little video tomorrow where we go over some film on
some more like x's and os specifics. Today won about
x's and o's to me. Today Today was purely about
(20:00):
force of will and physicality, and in Minnesota punked the
Denver Nuggets. Tonight they punked him, and now they're in
real danger of a sweep if they don't get their
shit together. All right, moving on to Pacers Nicks. I
want to start with the end of the game and
we'll work our way backwards. So fifteen. Really interesting sequence.
(20:21):
So Brunston had been cooking Andrew and Nemhart all night long,
and we're gonna get into more detail on that in
a few minutes. But Jalen Brunson was isoating Andrew Nemhart
kind of around the elbow on the right side of
the floor, and Aaron Nee Smith is guarding Dante DiVincenzo
on the left wing and he's kind of sitting down,
digging down into the driving line. Haliburton's guarding Josh Hart
(20:42):
in the left corner, and Nie Smith throws a double
team at Brunson, And what I thought was really interesting
is Halliburton did his windshield wipeer rotation. He rotated at
the same time as Nie Smith. But Devincenzo positioned himself
about five feet behind the three point line. It's like
a deep three, you know, one of those classic Ryan
Anderson three. Your old Rockets fans will remember that. And
(21:03):
as a result of that, Halliburton's close out just didn't
matter because he was so far away from the rim,
and den de Vincenzo just stuck the three pointer. And
again the big thing there is Jalen Brunsy was cooking
Andrew Nembard the entire game to draw that specific double team.
So Devincenzo hits a three, it's one eighteen, one to fifteen.
We go down the other end. Siakam hits like a
(21:23):
really tough driving layup over Og and Obi and Og
defended it well. But Siakim's big advantage in this matchup
is length, and he just kind of reached out and
got that scoop shot extended outside of him and put
it in off the glass. Really really impressive shots. So
now it's one eighteen, one seventeen. Then the Pacers forced
a turnover with some pressure on Brunson. Pressure in the
(21:43):
back court that they got away with, and then pressure
in the front court. After a timeout, Brunson throws the
ball off at Haliburton. It bounces back and hits Brunts
and now it's PACER's ball and we get an illegal
screen called on Miles Turner. Now, for the record, I
don't care about it in the context of this game.
Bad calls happen in basketball games. As a player and
(22:06):
as a team, you know that going into the game,
if you let a game stay close, you're always at
risk that a bad call could hurt you. Maybe even
a couple of bad calls, and the Pacers got on
the bad end of two bad ones at the end
of this game, not just that one, but also the
bruntson pocket past. I think it was to Heartenstein, I
can't remember, but it was a pocket past. It might
(22:27):
have been Josh Hart, can't remember. Brunton throws that pocket
past and Nie Smith hits it with his hand and
gets called for a kickball. Like that was a bad call.
So but like that's the thing. As a pacer, you
gotta be looking at that, like we got. We were
on the wrong end of some bad calls today. Totally
just part of the game of basketball. What I have
a problem with is the larger issue that the NBA
(22:48):
is having with officiating now, because why in the hell
was that called in that situation, That specific type of
screen where it's like there's a little bit of movement,
a little bit of nudge at the end. That same
screen happens like fifty times in an NBA game, and
it might get called once or twice, and usually in
(23:08):
the first quarter or something like that, almost never at
the end of games. And this is the larger issue.
NBA refs do not understand why they're there. We have
refs to facilitate basketball games. That's it. It's not about
enforcing the rule book to the letter. That's not what
(23:29):
this is about. The goal is for us to not
even notice they're there. There is a lot of discretion
in this job, and the discretion is let the players
decide the game, not the officials. And so what I
have a problem with is when there's a call in
a gray area in the ref defaults to blow the whistle. So,
for instance, if a ball screen's coming and you're the ref,
(23:51):
you have to watch out for an illegal screen, you're right,
And like there have been times where the wrong end
of this. What was the one God it was the
was it that Rockets team that the Jazz It was
in the late nineties and John, I think it was
John Stockton broke three, broke free for a three at
the top of the key that won the series. And
there was just a like an obnoxious illegal screen. Like
(24:15):
so it looked like, you know, like Zach Martin pulling
and and blocking him like he's a pulling guard. It like, yeah,
you don't want you have to call it if it's outrageous,
if it's outside of that gray area. But what bothers
meme is inside of that gray area, when rep's a
default to blowing the whistle, it makes no sense to
(24:36):
me like that dude was looking for an excuse to
blow the whistle, which means he doesn't understand why he
was there. You're not there to blow the whistle. You're
there to facilitate a basketball game, and I thought that
was the Anthony Edwards tech is another example. All he
did was walk over and stare. There have been a
(24:56):
dozen more boisterous trash talking sessions or complaints just in
the few games since then that went uncalled as technicals,
which means that ref was just waiting for a reason,
and we have to find a way to get that
out of the game. There needs to be like an
overhaul of the way that we train refs to help
(25:17):
them understand that when things are in the gray area,
we would prefer to watch the players determine the outcome,
and that means not gifting a team a point over
a stare down, And that means not calling every damn
illegal screen or you could call a carry on every possession.
If you slow the game down and watching slow motion,
(25:38):
almost every ball handler puts their hand a little bit
under the ball and the ball stops spinning. By the book,
that's a carry, But somehow we have discretion there. And
that was just so frustrating because that was such an
entertaining basketball game. Back and forth. Pacers are playing really well.
Runson hits a bunch of big shots laid You're in
this dog fight, and all of a sudden, you get
(25:59):
this amazing Siakam layup in this big time defensive play
from the Pacers to get the ball back, and they
don't even get a shot because of a really iffy
illegal screen. I had a huge problem with that call.
But let's get back to the game at large. So
obviously after the illegal screen, the Knicks closed the game
out at the foul line that it's over from there.
Right on the Knicks front, Brunson was just unreal. He
(26:22):
burnt Andrew embar to a crisp in that game and
literally forced the Pacers to double team in at the
end in that same matchup, which led to the eventual
game winner from Dante DiVincenzo. Now the most consecutive forty
point playoff game since Michael Jordan. That's some rare company
for you there. I was thinking about this earlier, you
could make the case that Brunson has been the best
(26:45):
small guard in the league this year, like last year
it was Stephen Dane. I think you could say that
that Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell have kind of made
their move on that corner. Again, it's a small sample.
You want to see it sustained. But within this season
the two best small guards have been Jalen Brunson and
Donovan Mitchell. They've been killing. And on that note, what
(27:05):
I thought was really interesting. I couldn't believe the stat
when I saw it. I was scrolling through Instagram earlier today.
So they are eight teams remaining, right, that means what
forty starters? Six players out of those forty are over
thirty years old? How interesting is that? Like the younger
(27:27):
like when we talk about experience now it doesn't mean,
it doesn't seem to mean as much like the younger
guys are taking over the league. Six players over thirty
in the starting lineups out of forty remaining here in
the second round, I thought that was super fascinating. Dante
Di Vincenzo and Josh Hart a bunch of timely scoring
that huge and one late from Josh Hart, got a
(27:49):
couple of big offensive rebounds to Dante DiVincenzo, not just
that three really lively as a shot creator all night.
The starting lineup, just the starters for the Knicks scored
one hundred and eighteen points. And then one of the
big things that I wanted to shout out, I thought
Dante DiVincenzo did an unbelievable job on Tyrese Haliburton. And
(28:10):
this kind of goes back to what we were talking
about with Jamal Murray earlier, but Dante DiVincenzo. When you
like what happened with Murray, they're pressuring in full court,
they're randomly trapping in, they're being physical all over the place,
and it plays Jamal into this like not just poor shooting,
but poor decision making, right I thought. I thought Halliburton
(28:32):
was really bad down the stretch of this game and
super passive throughout, and a big part of that was
Dante DiVincenzo just got up in his grill, got physical,
in handsy, and threw him out of whack. He hit
What was I talking about in the Nugget series, Like, oh,
they were trying to force pocket passes that weren't there.
They weren't seeing help defenders that were there. What happened
(28:53):
with Halliburton at the end of this game. There was
that random pocket pass that he tried to force when
nothing was open. It was a turnover. There was the
play where he was driving along the white the right
side and og Ananobi was guarding the strong side corner
and Halliburton just didn't even see him and og went
in and swiped the ball free. I think that was
the play where he went down the other end he
got the dunk. There was like a play where he
(29:17):
came off a ball screen and picked up his dribble
for no reason and then threw like this crazy lob
back across the court to Miles Turner and I'm like, whoa,
Like he's losing his focus and decision making now, and
so like again, it's a much smaller version of what
the Timberwolves did to the Nuggets. But but Dante Divincenzo's
individual defense on Halliburton did a number on the Pacers.
(29:40):
It was a big part of why they had to
lean so much on Andrew Nemhart late in the game, who,
by the way, was really good. But so it worked out.
But they had to lean a lot on how on
Nemhard and Siakam late in the game because Devincenzo basically
like just pressured Haliburton out of it. Now. I know
Haliburton hadn't really looked the same since he uh, since
he got back from his hamstring injury, but like this,
(30:02):
this is playoff basketball, and it looks like it's gonna
be playoff basketball for the foreseeable future. And so Halliburton's
got it. I don't know if it's putting on a
little bit more muscle or just getting better at handling
ball pressure, but he's got to figure that out because
that problem is not going away in this series. Devincenzo's
gonna be in his grill in Game two, and he's
gonna be in his girl in Game three, and he's
gonna be in his grill in Game four. And if
you somehow get some success on Devincenzo and they switch
(30:24):
him off, it'll probably be a Duce McBride doing the
exact same thing. On the Pacers front, I was really
really surprised with the matchups that Indiana went with. I
talked about before the series. I thought Nie Smith should
guard Brunson and that they should put em Hard on
Devincenzo and then put Halliburton on Josh Hart. Obviously, some
(30:45):
rebounding issues there were Josh Hart, but you can rebound
as a team. There are ways to address that at
the team level. I thought that a Nie Smith gave
the best combination of size, strength, physicality and athleticism on
the ball on Brunson, and I thought Lati Vincenzo, being
the secondary creator Nemhart would be a good matchup there.
Nemhart on Brunson I just didn't get. He's not very
(31:06):
big and he's not very strong. He's a good guard defender,
but Brunson's playing at an insanely high level. And the
main thing I noticed early in the game, first possession,
Brunson just walks him down to the right block and
easily shoots a fade away over the top of him.
Brunson feels really comfortable shooting over the top of Nemhart.
Here's why that matters. The Sixers series was not like that.
(31:27):
Jalen did not feel comfortable shooting a pull up jumper,
like like straight up face to face against Kelly Ubrey
or Nick Batum to the same degree that he does
against Nemhart famously in game five, if I remember correctly,
that was the overtime game, and Brunson tried to shoot
a pull up three and batom guests and like almost
blocked it, and brunts him threw the ball out of
bounds because length, length is something that bothers pull up
(31:50):
shots when you're face to face, right, So what Brunson
did against the Sixers is he found soft spots in
pick and roll. He get batum or ubre in the
trail position on a ball screen and try to get
some separation in the ball screen, and then he'd hit
something in the middle before he got to embiid. Very
different type of shot making, which, by the way, is
(32:11):
why I talked about in this series the Pacers putting
more of like a I talked about it after the
Sixers series too, Just more of like a like a
like a Bruce Brown archetype, like a low center of gravity, bigger,
stronger guard that can flatten out some of Brunson's drives.
The problem is is when he's too small, like Nemhard,
he can just too easily shoot over the top, and
so didn't like that matchup. Dante DiVincenzo was really good
(32:33):
in this whole game. I didn't understand putting I didn't
understand putting Haliburton on him because Devincenzo was getting comfortable
and was active as a scorer in this game. One
of the big things that down the stretch that was
interesting we talked about from one to fifteen on, but
a big part of the Nick's scoring down the stretch
before one fifteen was ghost screens with guard guard screens
(32:58):
with Dante de vincenz Would we talked about in the
series preview was gonna be a huge part of the
Knicks offense. They were going to try to get better
matchups regard guard screens. So what they did is they
kept getting Brunson downhill by having Halliburton's man set the
screen Devincenzo. Halliburton would hedge, but Halliburton was doing a
bad job of hedging. Like like, again, your one job
(33:20):
on the hedge is to cut off the drive, but
Halliburton was bailing on the hedge and kind of even
getting in the way of Nemhard. So Brunson was able
to get downhill easily. And again, Devincenzo scored a bunch
in this game. And so like you want to hedge
and recover on a guy that's not a good movement shooter.
And so that's where it makes more sense for me
to in my opinion, to put him on Josh Hart. Now,
(33:41):
of course, if you put him on Josh Hart, you're
gonna open up some issues on the glass, but again,
Josh Hart was doing damage on the glass anyway. That's
a team concept. You have to rebound as a team, right.
So a big adjustment that I'm expecting from Indiana either
expecting a game to you were hoping for in game two,
I would move Nie Smith over to Brunson's so that
you have a bigger, stronger, taller athlete that can at
(34:03):
least bother Brunson's over the top shooting. Right. Then I
would put an em Hard on Devincenzo. So if they
run guard guard screens with Devincenzo, you can just switch
at that point at least or you could try to
fight through, but or if you hedge and recover, it's
a better athlete guard who can do a better job
of hedging and recovering out to Devincenzo. And then at
(34:24):
if you try to bring Josh Hart into those screens
and you have Josh Hart screen and you have Haliburton hedge,
you don't have to worry about the movement shooting aspect
that Devincenzo brings to the table. So I'd like to
see the Pacers kind of mix up all their matchups
in games two, but I guess we'll see. But I
want to shout a couple guys for the Pacers though.
I thought Aaron NEI Smith was awesome with his slashing,
(34:45):
especially late in the game. That dunk that he had
on Mitchell Robinson was disgusting. That was a really really
good playoff dunk. Andrew Nemhard's shot creation late had a
couple of big time driving layups that were really high
level plays at a short little pull up jump or two.
It was big time that he stepped up the way
he did because Haliburton was struggling so much. And then
Pascal Siakam again, he's got one of the toughest defensive
(35:06):
matchups in the series because og is kind of constructed
to make him shoot over the top or at least
around him to the sides, and Siakam just had a
couple of really big shots here, that short pull up jumper,
the step back late and then he had that big
scoop layup that got it down to one eighteen, one seventeen.
So gonna be a really good series. I'd like to
see the Pacers mix up the matchups. Haliburton has to
(35:26):
be better just in general, regardless of circumstance. Tyres Haliburton,
you're the leader of this team. You have to find
a way to be more impactful offensively, and again, handling
that ball pressure is gonna be key. But this is
gonna be a really fun series. I think you saw
some of the advantages that the Pacers have. TJ McConnell
was unbelievable. TJ McConnell's dribble penetration is just like one
(35:49):
of those things that I think is like a lot
of people in the league don't even realize, Like TJ's
literally one of the very best guards in the league
at just beating people off the dribble. I was watching
it tonight, just like cleanly toasting you know, guys like
Dante Di Vincenzo and Duce McBride off the dribble and
getting into the lane relatively easily. He's added that, you
know that little mid range pull up jump shot. He's
(36:10):
very good passer as well. It's just an unbelievable competitor,
big time night from TJ McConnell. But again, just like
shout out to the Knicks, shout out to Jalen Brunson
playing at the highest four game stretch as a score
since Michael Jordan. Gonna be a fun series, all right, guys.
I feel like that entire episode is just me yelling
(36:33):
it was crazy. It was a crazy night, all right, guys.
That is all I have for tonight. I'm planning on
doing something small tomorrow, just a little bit of film,
probably on Wolves Nuggets, just talking about how they kind
of got them out of there, out of whack mentally.
But I appreciate you guys for supporting the show. Don't forget.
We had series previews earlier this morning for Celtics Cavs
and MAVs Thunder. You can find that on our YouTube feed,
(36:53):
and they were also going live tomorrow night after those
games Game ones. I will see you guys. Then the
(37:21):
volume
Host
Jason Timpf
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