Doug Gottlieb (5:21)
Here's Mark Dagnote, who's their Head coach, talk about Shai's impact on the game. And I thought he led tonight, just with his approach and his force and his blend. You know, he threw great passes down the stretch. You know, the attacks Nick was talking about, you know, I thought he had good blend of attacks and early passes, and he kept the scoreboard moving for us down the stretch. Here's Chris Finch, Wolves head coach, talking about the difficulty in scheming against the mvp. Yeah, obviously, you know, Shay's a handful to contain. You know, he's getting around us to, you know, to. When there's contact, he's getting around us, and, you know, we got to do a better job of squaring him square. I mean, got to keep him in front. Once he gets on your hip, that's. Once you get. He gets you on his hip, that's when he can glean India, cut off angles, make you foul him, throw his hands up, heads back, throw the ball up and. Or just, you know, pivot, and you go kind of flying by. Like he. He's amazing at his use of angles. There's a little James Harden in terms of his foul merchantry. There's a little Kobe Bryant in terms of his footwork and understanding of angles and cutting into Gu. There's. There's a lot. There's also a lot of Kobe in terms of the footwork as well, like the pivoting it. There's parts of it which are incredible to watch. It's just hard with him falling down all the time. And what I think is sort of missing one is defensively how the Thunder are scheming, where they're playing much more of a college style called, you know, they're just loading to the ball, which means they're over into the gaps, deep into the gaps, into help. Daring you not just to make that easy pass next to you, that pass doesn't really. But daring you to get a dribble and then skip that ball to the weak side corner or the weak side low wing, right? Where now all of a sudden you have a harder closeout. And the counter last night for the Wolves was they put Anthony Edwards in the post, which helps. Somebody's not really a post player. It's not really what he does. He's a downhill attack guy, which means you skip the ball to him and then let him get downhill attack and then give him the answers, knowing where the. The questions are going to be posed to him. But I think the bigger thing is that there's nothing unlikable about the Oklahoma City Thunder. Right. There's nothing really unlikable about them. I mean, tell me what it is. They've. They. They've put together this team. You know, Shea was a big piece, but just a piece of the Paul George trade. You know, they've drafted well, they developed, they've added some really smart pieces, but nobody crazy. They. They obviously value Alex Caruso, who helped the Lakers win a championship and then was just mired in difficult seasons with the Chicago Bulls. And he's become kind of their defensive energy and. And stalwart here in the playoffs. Plus, he's got that championship experience. There's nothing like. It's just. It's not a great watch when the best player is constantly falling down and constantly drawing fouls. Constantly. And the difference is probably that we see it more clearly now. It's. It's a lot like officiating. Like, people can say officiating is worse now than it's ever been, but what's the reality to it? The reality to it is we see the calls way more clearly now. You know, you remember the first time you watched hdtv? You remember that? Remember when. When I think it was ESPN was like the sports. First Sports network. I was working there at the time, and they came out with. With ESPN hd, and you flip over like, man, that looks so much better. You go back to standard def. You're like, how did we survive this for 50, 40 years? And. And with that, with the much better technology, more cameras, more slow mo. You're like, even that. Have you guys seen the. The replay of the Halliburton three where he dribbles? It looks like he was grabbed twice, but then he double dribbles and then back dribbles back for a three. Like even that. Those are three things I didn't know happened. If not for that slow motion and camera angle, I had no idea. And I was watching the game in real time, didn't think anything of it. So I bring that up to point out that it's not that guys didn't draw fouls before. Michael Jordan drew a ton of fouls. Magic Johnson drew a ton of fouls. Larry Bird drew a ton of fouls. It's that it's one thing to draw fouls, to draw contact, to jump into guys, to absorb contact on drives, to get smacked on drives. It's a whole thing to grab somebody else's arm, lock it in with your arm, and then as you go to shoot, throw up your arm, which is then con. Contacted by his arm because it's stuck kind of in your bread basket, if you will and get fouled. Like that's free throw merchantry, free throw artistry that no one has seen at this level. And it's way, way, way more obvious now with replays with, with the best of, the best of cameras, with all the different camera angles. Now you're like, yeah, this is hard to watch. Hard to watch. And final fouls have occurred for years, years, years. But now it's just way more obvious. And it, it, it takes a really likable bunch that honestly is winning because their defense, more, their offense that seems to like each other, that seems to not take life all that seriously. Like they check the boxes for all the things you want, but their best player constantly falling down and ending up at the free throw line. It's just one of those like, yeah, I get it, but I don't love it. I don't love it. I don't love it. You know, we do have a sense of like manliness with our drives and our fouls in the sense that like playoff fouls. But I mean we, we went from Harden constantly throwing his head back and getting calls and not getting them in the playoffs to Shay Gil. Is Alexander literally cutting in front of people, purposely tangling their legs, falling down, locking in their arms, drawing vows and us getting annoyed by. It's. This is all new, right? This is his first time being the mvp. This is their first time in the conference finals with this group. All of this is new. And yet I would guess that this is going to be in addition to the fact that it's Oklahoma City. It's just not that great a watch. It's just not that great a watch. Whereas the Pacers Knicks series, and this is even before the Pacers came back and won. Just the, the way in which the Pacers play, the frenetic pace, the number of possessions and fewer fouls because you know, foul merchantry. And don't get me wrong, Jalen Brunson, he draws a lot of fouls. He, he does bang into guys and, and fall over. He doesn't do the lock in arms the way that Shay Gildas Alexander does. But that a better watching product. That's a better product. So you can hear what Chris Finch is saying, hey, don't let him get, get you on his hip. Keep him in front, square him up. They can't call fouls that way. But it's frustrating and his head coach saying, look, the best thing he did was pass tonight. But I would say that, that Shay is, you know, the bigger the stage, the better he's got to play, but the more obvious it's going to be that so much of his success is based upon his ability to get to the free throw line. That has to be a benefit of how good you are not you can't benefit from the free throng to be that good. I think that's thing there's where the disconnect is. He's great at what he does and he seems like an awesome dude. But as somebody who coaches and has watched and evaluated basketball for 25 years, yeah, it's a hard one to watch. And again, like we when we're recruiting, we like that volume of free throws. You get in there and you avoid or do you go to contact? There's a difference in going to contact contact and creating artificial contact in order there'd be any contact to get a foul. That's where you kind of draw the line. All right, coming up next in the Herd, I'm Doug Gottlieb. When someone is waiting on you and they say, well, wait a little longer, how do you react? More importantly, how will Aaron Rodgers react? We'll discuss next in the Herd.
