Thunder-Nuggets Prediction: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will take down Nikola Jokic & Jamal Murray

Thunder-Nuggets Prediction: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will take down Nikola Jokic & Jamal Murray

All right, welcome to hoops tonight here at the volume. Happy Sunday everybody. Hope all of you guys are having a great weekend. We have a very exciting day of basketball today. Game one of the second round series between the Pacers and the Cavs, which I think is going to be an underrated fun series. And then a very, very important, very big game seven between the Rockets and the Warriors on several fronts. I think I’m personally very much rooting for Golden State to win that game. I think they have a I think they match up in a very interesting way with Minnesota and I think that that would be a very interesting second round series. And as you start to go through some of the matchups in the second round with New York and Boston, Oklahoma City and Denver, who we’re going to talk about today, Oklahoma City is a minus 700 favorite in that series. Cleveland is a substantial favorite over Indiana. I think that Minnesota vers Golden State is what the basketball world needs for an interesting second round series. I think Houston would get demolished uh if they ran into Minnesota in the next round. But we have an awesome night of games tonight. Remember, our schedule tonight looks a little bit different because we have uh I’m working with Colin right after the final buzzer of the Warriors Rockets game. Then we’re going to go live on YouTube after I get done with Colin. And then we’re also going to go on playback after that to take questions and get interactive with the audience. So that’s the schedule for tonight in this episode this morning. series preview for Denver versus Oklahoma City. We’re going to get into that series from every single angle and then we’ll get out of here and go enjoy those games. 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_jasonlt 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 your rating and a review on that front. Jackson’s doing great work on our social media feeds on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Make sure you guys follow us there. And then last but not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in our YouTube comments so we can keep getting to them throughout the remainder of the postseason. All right, let’s talk some basketball. So, the season series between Denver and OKC, a rare example of a series preview where the regular season information is somewhat applicable. Most of the core players for both teams played in all four games. For Denver, Jamal Murray missed one, Aaron Gordon missed two, and for OKC, Hartinstein missed two games. But other than that, the core rotation players for both teams played. They went two and two. Each team won on each other’s floor once. The stars for both teams looked great at different points and struggled at different points. So, for instance, in the first Denver win back in November, the Nuggets did an awesome job defending Shay Gildas Alexander. They had him out of sorts for most of the second half. Christian Brown did a great job. They forced him into a bunch of turnovers. Denver methodically walked OKC down. That was a game where Shay struggled, right? In the other win for Oklahoma City or the other game back in November that Oklahoma City won, Cadet kicked Joic’s ass and the Thunder defense shut down shut down the Denver offense and they ended up winning that game in convincing fashion. But both of those games were very early in the season. They uh they met twice later in the season. The first game was close until the fourth quarter and then the Thunder blitzed them with their bench group. ironically, a lot of really high level play from Kesan Wallace and and uh um Alex Alex Caruso during that stretch. But then they played again a couple nights later and that game was close until the second half when the Nuggets successfully deployed a very gimmicky zone defense where they double teamamed Shay crossing half court. We’ll talk a little bit about that, but that shut down Oklahoma City’s offense. Denver started getting out in transition. Denver scored 140 points in that game to get a win. So, a lot of really interesting data in favor of both teams coming from the regular season. Actual big picture data in the four games, Denver averaged 112 points per 100 possessions on offense. Oklahoma City averaged 118. Denver did win the rebounding battle. They grabbed 52.2% of available rebounds, 32.2% of their own misses. That’s obviously going to be a big factor in the series. Odds, again, all of our odds are provided by DraftKings. Oklahoma City is minus 700 to win the series. That’s a substantial favorite. Boston, by the way, uh, for comparison, is minus 800 to beat the Knicks. So, they view the Nuggets chances to beat Oklahoma City as roughly the same as New York’s chances to beat Boston. I disagree with that. I think that there’s good value in the betting market for Denver here. Denver at plus 500 as the underdog. I like that bet. I think the Thunder deserve to be a pretty substantial favorite, but I think Denver has a much better chance to upset Oklahoma City than New York does to upset Boston. A really simple way for me to describe it is Joic puts so much pressure on Oklahoma City’s defense. That is a problem Oklahoma City can’t really solve. They have to overcome it by winning other parts of the series. with New York versus Boston. They don’t have a single thing that they do well enough to present Boston with those sorts of issues. So, I don’t agree with those odds uh being as similar as they are. I I I would have I would have put Oklahoma City in more of that like minus 300 minus 350 kind of range. So, I do think there’s some interesting betting value on Denver in this series. Oklahoma City on offense. So, the matchups are going to look like this. We’ll see Christian Brown on Shay for most of the series. The NBA 82 game grind is done I think they might consider mixing that up if they start getting killed on the backline and they might have to consider putting, you know, uh putting, you know, either an extra guard on the floor like Russell Westbrook and taking Michael Porter Jr. off and having to have him guard JDub. Just I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a little gimmicky to try to keep Aaron Gordon closer to the basket. But I do think Aaron Gordon will start the series on JDub. Jamal Mur Murray will start on Lou Dort. Although we’ll also probably see Jamal Murray spend some time on Chad Homegrren. Michael Porter Jr. will start on Chad Homegrren and Nicole Joic will start on Isaiah Hartinstein. Defending Shay Gilders Alexander. It’s going to be a steady diet of Christian Brown. We’re going to see a mix of at the level coverages, deeper drop coverages, and zone looks. And again, all that means is in the ball screen, Christian Brown’s constantly going to be chasing Shay over the top. But we’ll see Joic come up all the way to the level of the screen sometimes and then we’ll see him sitting a little bit further back meeting Shay closer to like the elbow like around the foul line area. Shay did kind of have Christian Brown figured out in their last two games. He started beating him just one-on-one to the basket. He was getting more separation, but Brown did have success against Shay earlier in the season. He was able to apply some good ball pressure and back pressure that uh that caused some issues for Shay. So, that’s going to be a big swing factor in the series. Just how good of a job can Christian Brown do on Shay? How physical is he allowed to be? How much success can he have uh using his size and strength on ball against Sheay in pick and roll? The higher that Joic comes out to the level, the more likely he is to get split. And there were a lot of examples. And what I mean by that is like you can imagine Sheay coming off of a ball screen. Joic comes up to the level, but Sheay just comes off the ball screen and then quickly crosses over and shoots that gap between the screener and Joic when he’s up there at the level. And there were several examples on film where Joic when he came out that high did get beat pretty badly by Sheay. And in those situations, their defense completely fell apart. They started giving up layups. But Joic did log some quality possessions on tape where he was able to successfully protect the rim against Shay in a deeper drop. Not a full deep drop where he’s like on his heels all the way back at the rim, but rather meeting Shay closer to like the foul line area where he’s kind of like in a a stance that’s kind of funneling him towards the side of the rim that they’re already on, like towards the sideline, so to speak. And in that situation, he can actually generate some contact with Shay before he gets to the rim, which can prevent Shay from really getting explosive downhill. And he actually had some really nice rim protection possessions against Shay in that kind of like middle drop where he’s meeting him more in the middle of the floor. I think we’ll see a lot of mixing up coverages. I think the deeper drop will be a base coverage for Denver, but I think they’ll mix in the occasional blitz. I think they will mix in some at the level stuff. I think they’ll mix in zone out of timeout, out of dead ball situations. We’ll talk some more about the zone uh coverages here in a little bit. Jaylen Williams, I think we’ll see more of a deeper drop against him as well. It’s been a mixed bag with Jaylen Williams in ball screens against Denver this year. Like there are possessions where he does a nice job of baiting Jokic to step out and he can create really easy lobs for Isaiah Hartinstein, but he was also the guy who was quick to settle for some tough contested mid-range jump shots early in the clock. One of the things I noticed on film was that OKC got really good looks for JDub and for Isaiah Hartinstein out of cleared side pick and roll. Denver likes to load up the paint. So if you run pick and roll in a way that the the roll man is rolling towards the middle of the floor, Denver can properly congest things around there. But when they had JDub like coming out of the corner with Hartinstein screening and Hartinstein popping or rolling through to like the short corner on the baseline side when that occup that entire side is unoccupied so that there’s no help defender. They were able to get lobs and easy opportunities for Hartinstein rolling because Denver couldn’t properly load up on the roll man when they actually cleared the side. I think that’s an action that we’ll see quite a bit. Doesn’t even have to necessarily be a ball screen. It can just literally be JDub in the corner. Sh. Isaiah Hartenstein gets a a pass out towards the top of the key. The Thunder space on the weak side and then Hartinstein just dribbles into a dribble handoff with JDub coming out of that right corner and then just rolls hard to the rim. They actually did get quite a bit of vertical spacing opportunity from Isaiah Hartinstein in general in this matchup in particular in large part because Aaron Gordon is pulled away from the rim to guard JDub in so many of these situations. I think we’ll see a lot of screening action for CET. CE didn’t just say see Michael Porter Jr. like I talked about earlier, he saw a good amount of Jamal Murray in this in this series. And both of those guys can be really sloppy or lazy navigating screens sometimes, communicating through switches. Cadet got a lot of advantage opportunities slipping out of those screens. And so I I look for Oklahoma City to use chat as a way to attack Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. throughout the series. They’ll run like wide pin downs, too. So like they’ll have like they’ll they’ll literally just put, you know, chat in the right corner and they’ll have Dort screen down for him so that they have Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. defending an offball action and all it takes is one of those guys to be lazy and there’s a or to botch a communication and they can get an advantage for Cadet there. And the biggest thing for Chad’s just going to be his three-point shooting. If Denver gets to the point where they feel like they can ignore him off ball, that could be a big swing in this series. And that’s going to be a big swing for a bunch of these guys. Dort Caruso is a big one. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Denver do some janky stuff like just putting Jokic on Alex Caruso and having him sit in the paint. Like a lot of those guys are going to have to hit shots. Hiding Jokic on a non-shooter is going to be one of the janky things that we see Denver try. I think we’re going to see a lot of that kind of like janky experimental stuff. Like I think we’ll see zone, we’ll see traditional zone, but I think we’ll also see that double teaming zone that we saw in their fourth game this year. And again, all it was was they basically just treated it as a two- three where Hartinstein would be back in the paint. They’d have two guys on the wings and the two guys at the top of the zone as soon as Shay crossed half court would just double team him. And then those guys, the three guys that were on the back line, they would come up to like bait them as decision makers, but they were willing to concede pretty much any jump shot above the break or in that like elbow area. And OKC’s offense really fell apart in that stretch. It’s just kind of a weird situation to get your shots out of or like you’re taking a wide open above the break three but there’s players behind you on the play. Like it just kind of feels weird and it can get guys out of rhythm. I think we’ll see some of that as well. I mentioned hiding Jokic on a non-shooter. Processing is going to be big. Like Denver knows they have an experience and IQ advantage in this series and I expect them to try to exploit that through janky janky schemes. But this is a smarter Oklahoma City team than they were last year. I was really impressed in general with how they handled Memphis. Memphis is very similarly to Denver, a team that likes to load up the strong side and force you to beat them with the pass. And there were sever there were several examples in this uh in that first round series and over the course of this season where I’ve seen Oklahoma City show a lot of growth processing in the middle of the floor. Meaning like when Shay hits the roll man, when a guy cuts in or flashes into the middle of the lane out of a Shay double team, like those guys are just quickly reading the floor and making the appropriate kickout passes, hitting cutters, hitting three-point shooters on the weak side. OKC is a lot more mature offensively than they were this time last year. Denver on offense. I think we’ll see Lou Dort on Jamal Murray, Isaiah Hartinstein on Jokic, Cet on Aaron Gordon, JDub on Christian Brown, and Shay on Michael Porter Jr. Although we could see some of those matchups get kind of reconfigured. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Chad end up spending more time on Christian Brown and JDub on Aaron Gordon. If Aaron Gordon has some success posting up on Chet just using his size and strength, we’ll see. uh Aaron Gordon I attacking, you know, perceived mismatches in the post is a big part of what Denver will look to do in the playoffs. Jokic in the post is going to be a really interesting part of the series. This will be a series where I think we see Jokic in the post more than usual. Again, we talked about it in the Clippers series. It’s a different type of matchup with Zoo, but this is going to be a series where I think we see a ton of Joic postups. I was digging through the film today. Joic, including passes, posted up 62 times versus Oklahoma City in four games. That’s over 15 possessions per game. He averaged about 10 post-ups per game in the regular season. So, he posts up about 50% more often in this matchup than he does in uh on average throughout the league. He’s going to be much more comfortable versus Hartinstein and CET than he was against Zoo. And it really is going to come down to double teams. The Thunder are going to double team and then it’s going to be a contest between can OKC be physical and rotate and and close those windows quickly and rush Denver’s role players into making mistakes or missing shots or is Denver going to quickly process and bounce the ball around and get great looks out of it. And for the record, I think we’re going to see a bunch of both in this series. Uh, one of the I’m, you know, we’ll talk about it when I get to my pick, but I’m expecting a longer series. And I think this is going to oscillate back and forth between stretches where Denver’s really scoring the ball well and they look in control and then stretches where OKC is successfully rushing them into mistakes and then Oklahoma City starts to take control. But starting out of those Denver double teams, it’s going to be that battle of like quick processing and play finishing versus physicality and speed and rotation and just which which one of those dynamics ends up controlling. Getting Lou Dord off of Jamal Murray is going to be big. Denver is an excellent screening team and that’s going to be key in this series. When if Joic and Christian Brown and other guards can set good hard screens that get Lou Dort separated off of uh of Jamal Murray, he’s going to be comfortable and he’s going to make a lot of good stuff happen. But if OKC can stay attached to Jamal, they can speed him up. They can cause him to lose balance on his base and he can start to miss shots and turn the ball over. And there were stretches in this series, in the season series, where Murray looked comfortable and then there were stretches where he looked really uncomfortable. And again, it’s going to swing on that specific dynamic. Offball attentiveness for OKC is going to be big. OKC held up pretty well offball tracking cutters in the last two games of the season against Denver, but they got absolutely shredded by cutters in the two games back in November. If you get caught ball watching against Joic, that’s death. That’s going to be a big part of Oklahoma City’s attention to detail in this series. The Thunder’s best path to taking care of business in this matchup is that pressure and speed dynamic. Picking up Jamal Murray full court, wearing him out over the course of the series, speeding up Denver’s role players, playing Michael Porter Jr. into a bad offensive series, staying disciplined with Russell Westbrook. You’re athletic enough to play Russ into a bad series. Russ isn’t going to have the same kinds of advantages in the series athletically that he’s had in uh uh in many situations this year for Denver, right? So, there’s only so much you can do to speed up Jokic, but the other guys are very susceptible to OKC’s speed and physicality on the perimeter, and that’s where Oklahoma City needs to really leverage that um that strength. Lastly, for Oklahoma City, got to work as a team to keep Denver off the glass. Denver rebounded almost a third of their own misses in this matchup in the regular season. If they get killed there, that could be something that turns into an important margin for Denver. I’m picking OKC in seven. I think this series will oscillate back and forth on the engine that is Denver’s offense. Denver’s offense is more than good enough to beat elite defense. The Clippers were the third best defense in the league this season and Denver eviscerated them on that end of the floor. In the wins in the series with Joic on the floor, they had a 121 offensive rating against the top three defense in the NBA. I think there will be stretches, especially in Denver, where the Nuggets look in control because they’re just scoring the ball and controlling flow. But I also think we’ll see extended stretches of the series where Oklahoma City’s Denver speeds up Denver, causes them issues on offense with their physicality and their ball pressure. Then OKC starts playing with pace and then they’re in control. Oklahoma City does have more talented basketball players. They have a better bench. They have real rim protection. They have better point of attack defenders. They have more reliable offense down the roster. Like this this team has a lot of talent. Their defense has a level of consistency to it that will keep them in every game. There’s going to be a lot of half court action in this series where we’re watching guys like Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. fighting for their lives trying to guard guys like JDub and Chad Homegrren. They’re going to have a hard time in that matchup. Overall, I think Oklahoma City is smart enough to handle this. I think they’re going to process very well in this series. I think it’s going to be very fun. I think it’s going to be back and forth, but I think Oklahoma City will end up closing this out in seven games. the pathway for Denver. And again, I do think this is a real pathway. I would not be I would be a little surprised if Denver won the series. I would not be stunned or shocked. Joic needs to assert himself as the best player in the series early and often. The Nuggets offense needs to operate at peak efficiency for like five or six of the seven games. The pressure of the moment and the experience advantage needs to lead to Denver being more comfortable than their OKC counterparts. It’s like if Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray just straight up outplay JDub and Cadet, that’s a big swing in Denver’s favor. Denver would have to take care of the ball and keep OKC out of transition. They’ve generally done a good job in that matchup this season. There is a pathway, but everything needs to go right. It’s going to be a really fun series. I’m excited. We’re going to obviously be breaking down all the games um after each night uh live on YouTube. That’s all I have for this morning. Again, we’ll be back tonight with Colin after Rockets Warriors. After I finish recording with Colin, we’re going to be going live on YouTube. That’ll probably be up first. The Colin show is not live and then it gets produced. So, it’ll probably end up going up later in the evening. But the the Warriors game tips off at 5:30 Pacific. So, it’ll be done around 8 Pacific. I’ll be done with Colin no later than 9 Pacific. So, I would imagine right around 900 p.m. Pacific time is when we’re going to be going live on YouTube. We’ll do a a reaction to today’s games and then we will also head over to playback after that to do uh some film and to talk through um talk through your guys’ questions and comments and stuff along those lines. So, lots of uh basketball today, lots of content today. Looking forward to it. I will see you guys then.

Jason breaks down the upcoming second round playoff series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Denver Nuggets including how the Nuggets will try and guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, how Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray can get going, and what the x-factors in the series are, as well as his pick for the series.

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