Can Anthony Edwards lead the Wolves to the NBA Finals? | WCF Preview

Can Anthony Edwards lead the Wolves to the NBA Finals? | WCF Preview

I don’t want to rag on Dagnol too much. I don’t think this series should have gone seven if it weren’t for some of the mistakes he made early in the series. The following up three when Joic is off the floor. Uh the the weird challenge at the end of I think game three among I don’t want to go through it all, but so many errors early in the series. This could have been a shorter series for OKC is my point. Like this team is a juggernaut. this just they went seven against a super experienced Denver team as an inexperienced team that made some mistakes but now they face Minnesota been to a West finals before and they’ve had a longer run but they’re not necessarily Denver they haven’t won a finals yet with Anthony Edwards specifically his growth from last year to this year for people who maybe haven’t watched the Minnesota Timberwolves this season they’re more they’re fans of another team how would you describe how Anthony Edwards has evolved evolved from one year ago to where he is now. It’s that he doesn’t dunk anywhere near as much as you would think he does if you’re just watching highlights on Instagram. Like that obviously he can do it and those are cool. Um but it’s kind of like Cat. Cat was always like, “Oh, best three-point shooting big man in the league. I’m going to shoot three per game though.” You know, like that that didn’t translate right. You know, he doesn’t shoot a lot of threes. A doesn’t like get down to the basket and dunk a lot of the time. aunt’s superpower has become the three-point shot and the walk-in three, the finding his three, catch and shoot off the dribble, step back right, step back left. Like, he’s as good of a three-point shooter of as anybody in the NBA is right now outside of Steph Curry. And I’m talking about like self-created, probably the second best. I mean, I don’t know, right? Wouldn’t you say he’s it’s right there and he’s doing it on volume? He shot 11 threes a game, you know, during the regular season. That’s that’s the change in Anthony Edwards that if Yeah. If you haven’t been watching since last year and you’re you’re picturing him getting into the middle of the lane and trying to or trying to get to his mid-range, like no, his shot diet is he shoots a lot and he shoots a lot of threes. Um, and they want to create as many of those for him uh as possible. And then if a gap’s there and a defensive breakdown, yeah, then he’s going to try and take advantage of that and dunk on you. But a lot of the time his biggest flaw in this postseason is he’s not finishing well at the rim. And if you give him contact at the rim and that the kind that’s not called like he is not going to finish those at a high clip despite the fact that you might see him dunk on somebody at some point during the series. It’s just that eye test doesn’t necessarily um match what happens over the course of a 100 possessions uh in a game. According to Synergy Sports, this postseason, Anthony Edwards is making 47.7% of his total layups. In the half court, that drops to only 44.8% of layups in the ha half court. During the regular season, he was at 52.9% of made layups in the half court. Why the decline? That’s bad. He’s not He’s uh he needs to play to the contact more. And I I know that’s like getting a little floppier in that, but he tries to finesse his way like with force and then around it rather than uh straight through it, you know, like some other guys would and try to draw the contact there to get to the line. I mean, he’ll let you know he thinks he got fouled, but there’s he doesn’t he hasn’t totally like crafted the art of the sail uh yet on on some of those and and instead he kind of tries to play around the rim like the Hartinstein at the rim or whatever it might be and you know finish with finesse and that’s just a that’s just going to go in at a lower clip than you know two free throws would in terms of like points per possession there. In other words, you’re saying he needs to be disliked like SGAA and just start flaring and flopping around. Everybody, we hate everybody here. Everybody likes Ant, you know. Yeah. He’s the one person everybody likes. Maybe they maybe people will pick pick this dude. Yeah. No, I mean Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Now you see where where I’m coming from here. Everybody loves Ant SGA. Everybody just thinks he’s a grifter and a flopper, which is ridiculous, but also he does griff and flop sometimes because you have to What’s your point? You got to get off X, man. You gota You got a t-shirt on. What’s happening, dude? This is your brain. I had I had to zoom out and the logo. Yeah, sure. Kevin Oxrated. Yeah, good nickname there. Um, no, I one other thought here with uh with Minnesota. I get the impression you’re not totally confident at the series. Would you be picking the Thunder? I mean, don’t label me like a hater. They won 68 games. They’re the Thunder are really good. I I mean, in all seriousness, though, like it’s it’s hard. I’m around the team, you know, over the course of this season. You’re writing stories, doing podcasts about the things that don’t work for a team. And there was a lot of things that didn’t work for this team during the regular season. And so those are like more fresh on my mind and fresh in my understanding. But what I’ve been saying in this postseason is I need to like let some of that go from my mind because what’s happened in these postseasons is a lot of the a lot of the issues that they’ve had during the regular season go away in the postseason due to greater focus, greater intention, greater effectiveness. Uh the one of the biggest ones all year was the Wolves were terrible in clutch time and have been awesome in this postseason in that I that really impacted my view of where the Wolves could go in the playoffs. I’m like I watched this team blow game after game after game close in the fourth quarter during the regular season. So that impacted how far I thought they would go cuz clutch time is like playoff basketball, right? But Ant hits another level. Julius started making more sense. other guys have filtered into roles that fit them effectively for those times in the game and now there’s they look like a very different team like this is not a six seed you know they’re they were a six seed regular season team and now I need to remember that this is just one of the best teams in the NBA right now so maybe let go of some of those mental baggages or memories of what didn’t work during the regular season because largely it is working for this team and so maybe That does give them a lot better of a chance against the Thunder than I would have said a month ago when I was thinking about the six-seated Timberwolves versus the 68 win uh Thunder. I don’t know, man. I got to see it. Like, I want to see these games and see how they play against this Thunder team. I think if I were power ranking the championship contenders, the final four teams here, who’s most likely to win the NBA Finals, I would put it number one, Oklahoma City. Number two, Minnesota Timberwolves. Number three, crazy Indiana Pacers. Number four, New York Knicks. Do you have any disagreements with that? In other words, I’m saying the finals winner comes out of the West. I I I think it’s I think it’s close between the other three teams. Yeah, that’s how I would put it. Um I might I might have the Knicks above the Pacers. uh just but that those three those three were all are all close and and the Wolves have a real opportunity here. I think they see that they feel that they believe that these past couple years in the postseason, man, it was like let’s get postseason experience. Like it was weird being in the locker room after they won game five against the Warriors and they moved on to the Western Conference Finals. Like I saw more jubilation in there after like a win against the Hornets in February than I did after that. It was just kind of like all right. Yeah. No, this isn’t it. Like we’re moving on. You know, we’re ready for the Western Conference Finals. We’re ready to finally be tested because look, man, the Lakers nor the Warriors really gave the Wolves any problems in the postseason. And again, it’s what I’m talking about. This is a better postseason team than it is uh than it is a regular season team.

The Western Conference finals are SET following OKC’s dominant Game 7 win against the Denver Nuggets. Kevin O’Connor and Dane Moore weigh in on the WCF matchup between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

0:00 OKC eliminated Denver in Game 7
0:53 Anthony Edwards’ evolution
4:50 Thunder-Timberwolves WCF Preview

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