JJ Redick (12:38)
LeBron attacking smalls I think Anthony Edwards on LeBron is going to be an interesting type of matchup. Cause Ant is so quick laterally and so big and strong and like a fire hydrant that I think he can actually force LeBron to shoot over the top. But the other Smalls Nikhil Alexander, Walker, Mike Conley, Dante DiVincenzo LeBron's going to have some opportunity to attack there LeBron spent a good amount of time attacking Nas Reed in switches in their regular season matchup most recently, and Nas defended him really well there. In general, I don't really like LeBron attacking centers as much as I like him attacking Smalls. He did have a game recently. I think it was the Dallas game if I remember correctly, where he over and over again just started going at. I think it was Gaffer down the stretch in getting stuff at the rim. He's had some good reps there, but I don't think it would work particularly well against Nas, Reed and Ricobert. So keeping an eye on where LeBron looks to attack the Timberwolves ball pressure I view is an important factor in the series. If you guys remember in their last matchup, the one that Luka played in, the Lakers really controlled the early part of the game. But there was a second half run for Minnesota in there where they just picked up full court and wore down Austin, LeBron and Luka and they lost control of the game for a little bit. They did regain control in the fourth quarter, but there was a stretch there on the game chart where you saw that lead shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and it was a lot of that ball pressure from the Timberwolves forcing turnovers, getting out in transition. I'm a little worried for the Lakers about the Wolves overall athleticism and physicality, not so much their size. Everyone talks about like how much bigger the Wolves are than the Lakers. I actually don't see them as much of a bigger team because they're bigger at every other position. Like if you're looking at guard, like Austin's bigger than Mike Conley, Lucas bigger than Anthony Edwards, Rui Hachimura is bigger than Jaden McDaniels, LeBron James is every bit as big, if not a little bit bigger than Julius Randle. It's really just the center position and when they play two bigs that they have a little bit of a size advantage in the front court. But I don't look at it as a size advantage. To me, it's more of just like an overall athleticism advantage that Minnesota has that can manifest with their ball pressure and with them making like really hard closeouts that spook some of the Laker role players. If Rui gets a little spooked, if, you know, Dorian Finney, Smith gets spooked, if some of these guys in their spot up situations just don't look comfortable because of the Minnesota closeouts, that's where it could get a little tricky and Minnesota could start getting away with devoting more attention towards LeBron and Luca. So keep an eye on just the Laker role players and how comfortable they are in this particular matchup. So keys for the Lakers when the Lakers are on offense, Luka, LeBron, Austin handling ball pressure, not turning the ball over, punishing smalls instead of hunting bigs and switches again. And one last note. Well, actually we'll get to that when we get to the Wolves. And then three, they're role players just being confident and comfortable. As the intensity picks up, defensively from the Wolves. Keys for the Wolves, ball pressure like crazy. Gotta try to disrupt their offense, slow down their offense, force turnovers so you can get out transition. And then secondly, I would switch with their fives again. When they ran all that drop in the Western Conference finals, it allowed Luka to constantly operate with a size advantage and to get those kind of baked in driving lanes that he gets from ball screens. I would switch with my fives with Nas Reed especially, but also with Gobert because that is where you can bait LeBron and Luka into making the mistake of strictly hunting fives. We've seen that happen before. They did it against Al Horford in the Celtics game and it backfired. That is where you have a game plan advantage. You can bait LeBron and Luka into some bad process by switching with your fives, moving to the Wolves on the offensive side of the floor. JJ's defensive game plan in the regular season with Ant was similar to what he used against all the athletic guards that they faced. He would funnel them towards the sideline with a strong side zone, meaning the the defender who's guarding the next closest player on the weak side is skipping all the way to the other side of the paint, basically just waiting for Ant. There were some downsides there because it had a baked in Runway. As you open up your stance, Ant can really just drive. And when he gets ahead of steam, it doesn't really matter if someone's in front of him. If it's not a rim protector like Ant struggles with rim protection at the rim, he doesn't struggle with really anything else at the rim. So one of the things I think JJ will do is after watching the game tape from that game, I think he'll do a little bit more forward aggression. So with that strong side zone, I think he'll bring the defender further up and I think he'll close the stance just a little bit more, try to make it for the on ball guy to try to make it so that Ant just can't cleanly get a Runway to take off. But in general, I think it's going to be like literally a chess match type of game between JJ and and Anthony Edwards. A lot of mixing up of coverages. That strong side zone. I talked about blitzes, high drops, gapping and isos late double teams. After he puts the ball on the floor, I think we're going to see a ton of that stuff geared towards targeting Ant's inconsistent playmaking. Ant's playmaking is arguably the biggest swing factor in this series. If he can take JJ's game plan and use it as a consistent method to get the Lakers in rotation, they can win this series. From there. As long as they get the ball out to an advantage and they incrementally break down the Lakers defense with playmaking, they can win the series. It's just not a strong suit for this team. Aggregate playmaking falls off of a cliff when Mike Conley's off the floor. It is not a strength of this team, but if they can swing that factor in their favor, it could be the difference. Julius post mismatch hunting I hope the lakers start with LeBron on him instead of Rui, but I don't think they're going to. I think they're going to start LeBron on Jaden McDaniels. My guess is the matchups look like this. I think we'll see Rui on Julius, I think we'll see Austin on Ant, I think we'll see Luca on Conley, I think we'll see LeBron on Jaden McDaniels, and I think we'll see Jackson Hayes on Rudy Gobert. Now when Dorian Finney Smith comes in and they go to that core lineup, I think Dorian Finney Smith will go to Ant. I think Austin will move over to the off guard, whether that's Conley or or Dante or Nikhil. And then I think Luka will guard either Jaden or Rudy Gobert. But that's going to leave Rui on Julius and Julius has had his way with Rui over the years. As a matter of fact, I can almost guarantee you that Julius Randle at some point in the time since Sunday has thought to himself, rui Hachimura cannot guard me. He has had a lot of success in that matchup over the years. Rui struggles specifically with holding his ground and understanding that he has a huge strength advantage. Rui's a big strong dude and sometimes he just doesn't use that on defense. And I think Julius has a gift for like finding those weak points in a defender's defensive stance and just attacking it with power and dislodging the player and getting to his spots on the floor. Julius is a better passer than Anthony Edwards, so I am curious to see how much doubling JJ Redick will do there. He may go an opposite route and go, let's see if Julius just plays hero ball on all series and see if that actually benefits us more than trying to send extra defenders there. I think that'll be interesting. Jaden McDaniels is going to be a huge swing factor in the series. Obviously his shooting ability, his ability to knock down the open threes. He's been shooting much better post All Star break, but the Lakers are going to concede some shots to him. His crashing and cutting, he can be a really devastating athlete going towards the rim that the Lakers are going to have to contend with. Nas Reed was actually a non factor in the Lakers game that Luca actually played in. LeBron guarded him and LeBron did an excellent job on him and basically removed him from the game. LeBron will likely get that job again in this series. At times that'll be an interesting matchup to watch. Keys for Minnesota when they're on offense. Ants playmaking as we mentioned earlier, got to take advantage of the game plan as an opportunity to get the defense in rotation. Nasri, Julius Randle and Dante DiVincenzo supporting scoring. This is a Lakers team that's been scoring a lot of points lately. They're going to need guys that can score the basketball. JD McDaniels three point shooting again, he shot well after the All Star break, but that's going to be something he's going to have to continue to do really really well. And can Rudy Gobert do enough damage as a screener, as an offensive rebounder to stay a net positive? With some of his defensive value getting mitigated by the Lakers five out groups, that's going to be an important factor in the series for the Lakers game plan. Discipline when the Lakers let go of the rope a little bit on defense, they look super unathletic and the bottom can fall out for him. That's why they look so bad against bad teams after the Luka trade. That's why they're susceptible to some really long runs for the opponent as they let go of their defensive focus. Them staying focused on defense to the game plan and doing their job on a possession by possession basis is vital to their ability to guard this team. Aggressive coverages prey on Minnesota's lack of playmaking talent, force them to beat you with the pass and then lastly the boxing out and gang rebounding. Against Gobert and Jaden McDaniels, there's going to be a lot of offensive rebounds that Gobert and Jaden are going to be going for. It's going to be about multiple efforts from multiple guys getting bodies on them to box out and then other dudes coming flying in against better athletes to try to meet them up top. When you box them out on the ground, they can't jump when they can't jump that allows another player to beat them over the top to the rebound. It's going to be a team effort to survive on the glass. Swing factors in this series Jaden McDaniel's defense on Luka One of the biggest factors in the Western Conference finals last year was the simple fact that Jaden was too skinny to manage Luka. He did log some good reps. He but overall in the series, Luka was very comfortable and it basically caused the base defensive scheme for Minnesota in their pick and roll coverage to crack and to not work. That's going to be an important factor in the series. Is. Is Jaden going to hold up better against Luka than he did last year? Ants playmaking as we've mentioned multiple times in the show, I'm going to say role player shooting for both teams. Specifically for the Wolves, it's going to be off ball shooting from guys like Jaden McDaniels and guys like Julius Randle. But for the Lakers it's more about good shooters who are proven shooters. But that might struggle a little bit under the intensity of the environment as the Wolves are so athletic. So I'm just going to say role player shooting for both teams. Julius Randle is a player that has played very poorly in the playoffs in his career. I think it's a little more complicated than that because of some of the injuries he's been dealing with or recovering from in some of those situations. But Julius Randle's play in this series, him getting up to the player he was when he was an all NBA guy, could be a huge factor for the wolves. And then LeBron. This is a big physical defense that Minnesota has. LeBron killed the wolves in their last regular season matchup. I think he had 33 points and 17 rebounds. LeBron's ability to leverage himself to that extent is going to be a big factor in this series. If you look back at that at that point in time, that was before LeBron's groin injury when he was playing like a. Literally like an MVP candidate every single night. Really hasn't gotten to that level since. Level since he came back from the injury. A lesser version of LeBron could obviously be a swing factor in Minnesota's favorite favor as we head into the series. My pick. I think this is a very favorable matchup for the Lakers. I think Minnesota's greatest defensive strength, which is the combination of perimeter defense talent and rim protection, is neutralized by Luka because none of those perimeter defenders can really bother Luka. And then on the other side of the floor. I think the strength of the Laker defense, which is game planning, loading up and swarming, lines up with the weakness of the Wolves, which is their playmaking talent and just their overall decision making. So as I see on both ends of the floor, the strengths and weakness line up. This is going to be my first five game prediction. I think the Lakers are going to beat the Timberwolves in five games in this series, so we'll see what ends up happening. Obviously a lot that can go either way, but this is a a matchup that I think lines up really well for the Lakers. All right, guys, that's all I have for today. As always, I sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me and supporting the show. We'll be back with our 27 matchups tomorrow. I will see you guys then. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting Hoops tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.
