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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
T Mobile stats are as impressive as your favorite athlete's highlight reel because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now. Keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service support in 90 plus days device, knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months.
- [00:27]
JJ Redick
Foreign.
- [00:30]
Greg Rosenthal
What'S up everyone? It's Greg Rosenthal and I'm teaming up with the King of Spring, Daniel Jeremiah. He requires me to say that we're going to be bringing you 40s and free agents, the only podcast you'll need this NFL draft season. From DJs mock drafts to my top 101, free agents will have it covered for you with all new episodes every Thursday keeping you up to date as we head to the NFL Draft. Listen to 40s and free agents on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
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Unknown Speaker
The volume.
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JJ Redick
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- [02:57]
Greg Rosenthal
All.
- [02:57]
JJ Redick
Right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at the Volume. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great week. We are covering our next series today. The Los Angeles Lakers versus the Minnesota Timberwolves. Same format that we've been doing. The season series off the top. The odds on DraftKings right now, what it looks like with the Lakers on offense, what it looks like with the Wolves on offense, the swing factors I see in the series and then at the very end the pick that I am making for who will win. You guys know the drill before we get started, subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at_jason lt so you guys don't miss show announcements. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcast under Hoops Tonight. It's also super helpful if you leave a rating and a review on that front. We also have brand new social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook where Jackson's doing some great work this year. Make sure you guys follow us there. And then last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments so that we can get to them throughout the remainder of the season. All right, let's talk some basketball. So the season series went 2:2 between these two teams. Once again, not a lot of useful data there. Luca only played in one of those games and the Wolves were missing basically their entire starting front court at the time, so not a whole lot to gather there. Ironically, when it came to film, I spent a lot of time watching the Western Conference finals today and a lot of footage of Luca attacking specific types of defenders and just how he looked against all those different types of defenders. The odds, again, all of our odds are provided by DraftKings. The Lakers are a minus 200 favorite. That line has moved a lot. It opened closer to like minus 160 if I remember correctly. I think this is a little too big of a line. I think that the Lakers are a better team than the Wolves and as I've mentioned, I'm going to pick the Lakers to beat the Wolves. I'll explain all the reasons why, but I kind of thought it made more sense as a gambling line closer down to 160. So there's some value there on the Wolves, the Lakers on offense as far as matchups go. Again, I went back this morning and I watched every single Luka Doncic shot attempt from the Western Conference finals and even though Luka is very comfortable against Jaden McDaniels and he has a clear size and strength advantage there, Jaden did log a lot of good reps over the course of that series. And yeah, there were good reps from Ant as well. There were some good reps from Kyle Anderson, who's no longer on the team. But I still think Jaden is probably your best bet. So my guess is that we're going to see Jaden on Luka, we'll see Conley start on Austin Reeves. That's going to be a huge part of this matchup is whether or not Austin can play Mike Conley off the floor. We'll talk about that in a little bit, but I do think we'll see a lot of Dante DiVincenzo, a lot of Nikhil Alexander Walker in that two spot. I think we'll see Anthony Edwards on Rui. I thought he might spend some time on LeBron and I'm not saying that he won't, but I think with the job that Ant is going to have on offense in this game, it almost makes more sense for him to guard Rui. It can be a little a like lackadaisical off ball tracking shooters, which could be a little bit of an issue in that matchup, but it will save his legs considerably versus trying to battle LeBron all over the floor. That would mean Julius would guard LeBron, which we'll see how that would end up going. And then Rudy Gobert on Jackson Hayes to start. But again the Lakers will go small, something we'll talk about right now. So the Gobert problem I seen a ton of people on Twitter talking about and debating the Lakers and their ability to play Rudy Gobert off the floor. And I've seen a lot of Timberwolves fans come back and play point out the obvious fact that Rudy Gobert is a very good switch defender. And for the record, I agree with Wolves fans about that. To me, the Gobert problem has nothing to do about with hunting isos against Rudy Gobert I think if the Lakers fall into that trap, it could actually backfire on them. Looking back at the Western Conference finals, we didn't really see a lot of Luka attacking Gobert. We really only saw that in game two. The Wolves mostly ran drop coverages with Gobert in that series. They just went to the switching in crunch time of game two. And yeah, Luka did score on Gobert once on a setback three to win the game. But it's not a matchup that I think the Lakers should get obsessed with hunting. The advantages that Luka and LeBron have in this series are against the Smalls, Luka attacking a skinnier Jaden McDaniels attacking into keel, Alexander Walker attacking an Anthony Edwards attacking the smaller defenders that are on the floor, LeBron as well. If LeBron, especially if he gets into hunting Go Bear, I don't think that's going to go super well. So like that is not the right focus point for me as far as how Go Bear fits into this series. Where the Lakers can really hurt Go Bear is in his off ball defense and then on the other end of the floor. What do I mean by off ball defense? So when you go to your five out spacing group, so take Jackson Hayes out, put in a either a Dorian Finney Smith or a Gabe Vincent, you're going to see a lot of Dorian Finney Smith. That's the line, that's the Lakers clear Best five that you're going to see a ton of in this series. Austin, LeBron, Luko, Dorian, Finney Smith and Rui Hachimura. All of those guys, if left open, are going to hit a high percentage of their threes. So with that being the case, I'm more concerned about Gobert when Luka and LeBron are hunting smalls being put in a position where he has to either help at the rim where his rim protection value is very high, but he's going to have to concede wide open threes or him having to track shooters on the perimeter off the ball, which dramatically mitigates his defensive value. Either way, his rim protection is less valuable if it's conceding open threes and him tracking shooters on the perimeter is way less valuable because the Lakers just won't even go that way. They'll look to score at the rim or in other spots on the floor. And so that's where I look at Gobert on defense being minimized by the Lakers five out lineups. Not hunting him in switches but rather mitigating his rim protection and then on the other end of the floor when Gobert is out there, you're going to see a ton of defensive game planning from J.J. redick. When it comes to the the dynamic of like playing guys off the floor, it actually to me comes down to a little bit of Gobert and Conley. If Austin Reeves can score effectively against Mike Conley, that Chris Finch goes away from Mike Conley, Gobert's offensive value sinks considerably. Mike Conley is the only player on the Wolves over this era that's been able to successfully weaponize Gobert as an offensive threat. Their timing in ball screens, in the way they go Bear can free Conley up in screens. The timing of when Gobert slips out into his roles, Go Conley's just kind of chemistry with him over the years from when they played together on the Jazz. That was the dynamic where they could actually use Gobert as a successful role man. But if Austin can score successfully enough against Conley to get Conley off the floor to where it's more Nikhil Alexander Walker or Dante DiVincenzo, those guys are much better defensive players and obviously both of them are knocked down three point shooters. But those two guys don't have the playmaking talent that Conley does. If you can play Conley off the floor and space Gobert away from the rim on the other end of the floor, then Gobert becomes basically an offensive rebounder and a screen setter and a screen setter that can't score on the other side of the screen. And so that's where I could see the Gobert problem being an issue. If they can play Conley off the floor and if instead of just hunting him in switches, they space him away from the rim in their five out groups. Right. Where I could see Gobert being a benefit to the Wolves defense in this matchup is in the other lineups like when Jordan Goodwin's on the floor, when Jared Vanderbilt's on the floor. Jackson A it's a little tricky because he's a vertical spacer. And as we saw in the Western Conference finals last year, Luka did a really nice job of kind of baiting Gobert into no man's land between Luka and the lob threat so that he could get those lobs as he was attacking downhill against his matchup and running into Gobert. So it's less about Jackson, but when Vando's on the floor, I think Gobert could be devastating. When Jordan Goodwin's on the floor, I think Gobert could be really devastating. And then the just like all of the usual stuff that he does on offense. He's just gotta be really impactful there. He's gotta, you know, offensive rebound like crazy and set really good screens as best as he can. But that's gonna be the dynamic in this series that's gonna be really interesting. It's just how much can Mike Conley play and how effective can Rudy Gobert be in the context of the Lakers? 5 out groups T mobile stats are.
- [11:40]
Unknown Speaker
As impressive as your favorite athlete's highlight reel because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network switch. Now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service report in 90 plus days device in eligible carrier and timely redemption required card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [12:09]
Greg Rosenthal
What'S up everyone? It's Greg Rosenthal and I'm teaming up with the King of Spring, Daniel Jeremiah. He requires me to say that we're going to be bringing you 40s and free agents, the only podcast you'll need this NFL draft season. From DJs mock drafts to my top 101 free agents will have it covered for you with all new episodes every Thursday keeping you up to date as we head to the NFL Draft. Listen to 40s and free agents on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [12:38]
JJ Redick
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.
- [25:16]
Unknown Speaker
The Volume.
- [25:20]
Greg Rosenthal
What'S up everyone? It's Greg Rosenthal and I'm teaming up with the King of Spring, Daniel Jeremiah. He requires me to say that we're going to be bringing you 40s and free agents, the only podcast you'll need this NFL draft season. From DJs mock drafts to my top 101 free agents will have it covered for you with all new episodes every Thursday keeping you up to date as we head to to the NFL Draft. Listen to 40s and free agents on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.